All entries by this author

Large but irrefutable

Aug 17th, 2023 8:14 am | By

His what?

Former President Donald Trump’s promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County DA’s Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

He wants to blather about the indictment in a press conference? Is there any limit to his stupidity?

Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisors have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

Trump announced the planned press conference with a social media post shortly after he and 18 co-defendants were indicted late Monday in

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Wildfires approach

Aug 17th, 2023 7:53 am | By

How we live now:

Yellowknife residents have been ordered to begin evacuating the city immediately as wildfires approach, N.W.T. officials said Wednesday evening.

While the city is not in immediate danger, Environment Minister Shane Thompson said a “phased approach” to evacuating will allow citizens to get out safely by car or by plane.

People most at risk go now, the rest have until noon tomorrow.

“The fire now represents a real threat to the city,” Thompson said at a news conference Wednesday evening, adding it could reach the outskirts of the city by the weekend. The fire was about 17 kilometres from the city on Wednesday, he said.

Thompson said Wednesday that the highway from Yellowknife to Alberta is safe to

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Guest post: A face scowling at itself in a mirror

Aug 17th, 2023 7:40 am | By

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on WHO snake oil.

A small logical, and ethical, point: The claim that most Western countries are ‘the least racist countries there has (sic) ever been, anywhere’, whether it is true or not (I happen to think it largely true), does not entail that no racism occurs in them, nor that instances of racism should be ignored. And we might remember that the existence of these ‘least racist’ societies has depended upon people struggling to achieve fairness & justice. I wonder on which side certain commentators would have been on fifty, a hundred, or 150 years ago? I wonder also why, say, the Windrush business in the UK, or Republican efforts to suppress … Read the rest



Women must not use public transportation

Aug 16th, 2023 6:07 pm | By

How disgusting.

An Israeli journalist reported being pressured to change seats on an international flight on Tuesday, complaining that she was told by airline staff that any flight delays caused by ultra-Orthodox men attempting to enforce gender segregation would be her fault.

In a tweet, Neria Kraus, a U.S.-based correspondent for Channel 13 News, wrote that she had been asked to move by ultra-Orthodox men and alleged that she received no assistance after she turned to the Delta Air Lines flight crew for help.

Burying the lede. Why wasn’t the important bit in the first paragraph? Male religious fanatics tried to force a woman out of her seat because they think women are too filthy and whorey to sit … Read the rest



Guest post: How Things Might Have Happened In Academia

Aug 16th, 2023 4:40 pm | By

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

Here is a thought experiment about academia.  Let us imagine that, about 40 years ago, a few academic operators had invented a newish subject called “Critical Chemical Studies”.   The focus of this subject would not be actual chemicals, but rather the language used in writing or talking about  Chemistry:  catalogues of the frequency of words like element, molecule, valence,  bond,  reaction, intermediate, rate, etc. etc.; and then endless gabble about the philosophical implications of the words’ spelling,  font type, sound, pronunciation, association, and usage.

    Before long, journals would be established to publish disquisitions in this vein.  The scholars of Critical Chemical Studies would not need laboratories, beakers, or spectrophotometers, for they would not … Read the rest



A comic who espoused FGM

Aug 16th, 2023 2:52 pm | By

Talk about an own goal.

FGM he says? FGM??????? GM is what trans ideology DOES to its believers. Trans ideology does “espouse” gender mutilation, along with breast removal and puberty blocking and related horrors. Of all things to choose to illustrate “You wouldn’t talk that way about _____” he chose genital mutilation. Think, man, think.… Read the rest



Mandatory minimum

Aug 16th, 2023 9:42 am | By

Interesting. Prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers in an opinion piece at CNN:

RICO also carries sentencing benefits. A conviction under Georgia’s RICO law would carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, and most of the other 40 charges in the indictment likewise involve mandatory minimum sentences of one year.

None of the other charged cases include a mandatory minimum, upping the stakes for a Georgia conviction not only for Trump, but his co-conspirators, who will be deciding in the coming weeks and months whether they want to take a plea deal that might help them avoid this consequence by allowing them to plead to a count without mandatory minimum penalties.

Here’s hoping they all abandon him, every last one … Read the rest



An alternative venue

Aug 16th, 2023 9:11 am | By

In another part of the Fringe…

So there! Nyah!… Read the rest



Talk to the hole

Aug 16th, 2023 6:04 am | By

BBC insults women with a headline:

Celebrity MasterChef: Cheryl Hole on why LGBTQ+ representation is important

So the BBC is cool with calling women “holes”?

Drag artist Cheryl Hole said LGBTQ+ representation on shows like Celebrity MasterChef is important with “the community under attack”.

She appears in the penultimate week of heats of the celebrity cooking show.

Is “Hole” a drag artist or a she? He can’t be both, now can he – only males can do female drag, because that’s what drag means.… Read the rest



WHO snake oil

Aug 16th, 2023 5:53 am | By

Why on earth does the WHO do this?

[Ignore the first tweet.]

That crap isn’t a “first stop for health and well-being,” it’s just woo.… Read the rest



Put your money where your mouth is, bro

Aug 16th, 2023 5:29 am | By

Joan Smith asks what Humza Yousaf thinks he’s doing talking about toxic masculinity.

“Men cannot be passive bystanders when it is our actions that are causing such pain, suffering and misery,” he declares.

The pain of being punched in the face for supporting women’s rights, for instance? The suffering that comes from being locked up in a women’s prison with a convicted rapist? Or the misery of being forced to refer to the man who attacked you as “she” in court because he “identifies” as a woman?

Noooo. Women who don’t comply with the orders issued by men who claim to be women don’t count as women or as having pain.

Of course not. Giving a woman a black eye 

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Is it ‘false’ non-binary or false ‘non-binary’?

Aug 16th, 2023 4:54 am | By

A shocking headline:

Seven police interviewed, station raided over ‘false’ non-binary claims

Victoria Police officers have searched the force’s Frankston station and interviewed several officers accused of claiming to be non-binary to fraudulently claim more money for civilian clothing allowances.

You mean claiming to be non-binary when they’re not actually non-binary?

So…how can they tell? What’s the difference? What were they searching for when they searched the station? Binary fingerprints? Binary clothes, binary badges, binary socks? What? What exactly is there to search for? What is the difference between real non-binary and fake non-binary? What happened to “people are who they say they are”?

Chief Commissioner Shane Patton announced a probe into the issue in July, after reports that some

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What number? One?

Aug 15th, 2023 4:51 pm | By

The Herald on Leith Arches and its smug abrupt rude cancellation of a scheduled event because Leith Arches doesn’t like its “views.”

An Edinburgh Fringe venue has axed a show involving Father Ted creator Graham Linehan following a number of complaints.

“You can’t have a show involving Graham Linehan, he knows which people are women!!!”

The writer was the “surprise famous cancelled comedian” at the night being promoted by Comedy Unleashed at the Leith Arches.

He was due to appear in the show alongside Bruce Devlin, Mary Bourke, Dominic Frisby and Alistair Williams on Thursday night.

Today is Tuesday. How charming of Leith Arches to do this with all of two days’ notice. What exquisite manners.

Taking to X, formerly known

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The decision

Aug 15th, 2023 4:26 pm | By

It may be unlawful but it’s super enlightened, so no one will mind.

It’s more coherent and human-grammar-based than the first frenzied Announcement, but it’s just as ridiculous.… Read the rest



Guest post: There is no Adult in Charge who is going to step in

Aug 15th, 2023 4:04 pm | By

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Now ineligible.

Beware of anyone telling you there are clear answers here.

I’m sympathetic to the arguments in the paper, though I wouldn’t draw any conclusions without hearing an opposing view. But even the authors of that paper concede that the major precedent on the “self-executing” issue is a case from shortly after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and it’s by the then-Chief Justice Salmon Chase (in his capacity as a circuit justice), and it comes out the other way.

I don’t want to get into a long discussion about stare decisis and such. Suffice it to say that it’s a perfectly acceptable argument to say that Chief Justice Chase got … Read the rest



Yes but no

Aug 15th, 2023 11:05 am | By

Sam Levine at the Guardian explains the “is he barred from running?” question this way:

Can Trump still run for president?

Yes. The US constitution does not prohibit anyone charged with a crime, nor anyone convicted of one, from holding office.

The 14th amendment, however, does bar anyone who has taken an oath to protect the United States and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.

Relying on that provision, a slew of separate civil lawsuits in state courts are expected in the near future to try to bar Trump from holding office.

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Halfwits running everything

Aug 15th, 2023 10:40 am | By

So agitated they can’t type a single coherent sentence.

“we would like to thank the public for bringing to our attention, about a comedian” – “via emails from, and rightly so, outraged members”

And they are an inclusive venue that excludes people who are accused of no one knows what via emails from, and rightly so, outraged members.… Read the rest



Now ineligible

Aug 15th, 2023 10:26 am | By

Timothy Snyder writes:

Section 1 of Article Two is one, but not the only, place where the Constitution defines who may run for president. Whereas Section 1 of Article Two has to do with a factors over which a person has no control, place of birth and legal status of parents, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment concerns how an American citizen behaves. It forbids officeholders who try to overthrow the Republic from holding office again.

It is obvious on a plain reading of this part of our Constitution that (absent a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress) Donald Trump is now ineligible for the office of the presidency. He took an oath as an officer of the

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Why him?

Aug 15th, 2023 9:39 am | By

Why would any radio personality bring in India Willoughby of all people to talk about hate?

James O’Brien spoke to former Loose Women panellist and trans woman India Willougby after two men were stabbed outside a Clapham gay bar in a homophobic attack, as police hunt for the knifeman.

Why? Why not talk to a gay man rather than a man who calls himself a woman? Especially when the man who calls himself a woman is the venomous misogyny-mongering horror show that is India Willoughby?

India said to James: “You see attacks on drag queens, drag queen storytime. Now drag is not trans. Drag is gay culture and for me, thugs and bullies, they do not differentiate when you’re out

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Wait, he has a report

Aug 15th, 2023 6:30 am | By

Detailed but irrefutable. Why “but”? Detailed and irrefutable are not incompatible or contradictory. He meant “and” but his brain tricked him, probably because he knows the “details” are inventions aka lies.

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