We take for granted the various safety measures and health protections the collective intelligence of humans has come up with over the years, so we take an axe to those measures to “save money.”

At least, some of us do, and unfortunately the some of us who do are busy with those axes.

Over a thousand (1300) probationary workers at the Center for Disease Control are being let go by the Trump administration, representing about 45% of all probationary workers at the CDC.

Being fired. I dislike that “being let go” euphemism, especially in cases like this where the firings are wholly arbitrary and reckless. There’s no room for euphemisms here.

Among those laid off include all 50 first-year

… Read the rest

Maybe the CDC isn’t the right branch of government to slash? Maybe disease control is not actually a bad thing?

The Trump administration slashed hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including dozens of workers crucial to public health safety — as the country grapples with a potential “quad-demic,” according to reports.

As part of an effort led by the Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaire Elon Musk heads, thousands of probationary workers within the Department of Health and Human Services were told they were being terminated over the weekend, including 1,300 at the CDC.

According to NBC News, those departures included around two dozen workers at the Laboratory Leadership Service

… Read the rest

Sometimes the bafflegab is so extensive that the reader literally cannot tell what the reporter is saying.

Scots councillor claims he faces disciplinary hearing for calling non-binary child a boy

Well which kind of “non-binary child”?

Astoundingly, the Scottish Express doesn’t say. The result is a dense fog where a news item should be.

A Scots councillor claims he is facing potential disciplinary action for allegedly calling a non-binary child a “boy.” Controversial independent representative Alastair Redman will be hauled in front of Standards Commission chiefs next week to face accusations that he has breached the code of conduct.

The Argyll and Bute councillor was embroiled in a row in 2023 about parents complaining to a secondary school about a

… Read the rest

Maybe don’t take any plane trips for the next four years or so.

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

The impacted [fired] workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told The Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Transportation Department

… Read the rest

Man who pretends to be a woman and abuses any woman who points out he is a man tells JK Rowling to stop doing something she isn’t doing.

Please, please, please @jk_rowling – stop claiming you represent women. You absolutely do not. Most women abhor what you represent. Which is hate. Ask the 750,000 women of Unison who voted against your views last week. You represent the Gender Critical movement – very different.… https://t.co/pH6SEKdhhH

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) February 17, 2025

She doesn’t say she represents women. That would be an idiotic thing to say, and she’s not an idiot. (Jonathan on the other hand…) Saying women are organizing is not saying “I represent women.” It’s quite different, really.

The … Read the rest

Guy whines about not enough attention being paid to him our trans family especially the male part.

His name under the story is Jenny Maguire. He’s a man.

We must examine why a group that represents less than 1pc of the population now takes up such a large slice of the political and media landscape – and more importantly, what is being ignored as a result.

Well one major reason the group takes up so much space is the fact that it takes it up. It demands it, it grabs it, it camps out in it. The trans movement loves attention and can never ever get enough of it. If it had wanted to take up little space it … Read the rest

Seeking a way through:

Employers have handled disputes involving transgender issues “really badly”, the general secretary of the UK’s largest trade union has said.

Unison’s Christina McAnea said unions have a responsibility “to try and make sure that we find a way through this” and she would be happy to work with organisations on the issue. Speaking exclusively to The Scotsman, she referenced the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against while also ensuring women with concerns are “listened to and heard”.

But what does “the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against” mean? What does “discrimination against trans people” consist of?

That’s the problem. It doesn’t mean what it means in the case … Read the rest

Tom Nichols points out that we’re all the prisoners of Musk’s resentment and egomania.

One of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever pulled is to convince millions of people that DOGE, the self-styled Department of Government Efficiency, is about government efficiency.

DOGE isn’t really a department; it’s not an agency; it has no statutory authority; and it has little to do with saving money, streamlining the bureaucracy, or eliminating waste. It is a name that Trump is allowing a favored donor and ally to use in a reckless campaign against various targets in the federal government. The whole enterprise is an attack against civil servants and the very notion of apolitical expertise.

But it must be … Read the rest

One to watch:

Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.

It’s pretty tricky – aka impossible – to have a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers if the Big Boss is free to meddle with said agency. Trump wants to get rid of anyone who did or does or could blow a whistle on him, and that’s unfortunate, because he’s breaking rules and laws and constitutional norms all over the shop. Trump is the last person on the planet who should be able to … Read the rest

Wait who’s the joke?

https://twitter.com/ThomasWillett9/status/1891200704070459857

That’s so dumb it’s hard to believe. Maya doesn’t say “he’s tall therefore not a woman.” Her point is that a lot of newspapers apparently took great care to hide the fact that Upton towers over Peggie, presumably because that fact hints at the malicious absurdity of Upton’s claim that Peggie bullied and harassed him.

Magic Gender Ideology is so stuffed with lies and manipulations like this it’s a wonder anyone takes it seriously.… Read the rest

snerk

Emergency Board Meeting at NHS Fife pic.twitter.com/HGOjsh0W7r

— Mr Malky (@MrMalky) February 16, 2025

… Read the rest

Oh wait, now the NHS is threatening Sandie Peggie with even more punishment for knowing that a man is a man. You’d think they could at least do them one at a time.

A nurse who challenged a trans doctor for using women’s changing rooms is being threatened with the sack by the NHS after “misgendering” her colleague, The Telegraph can reveal.

Sandie Peggie, who brought a landmark employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton, is understood to have been told to attend a conduct hearing on Friday which her employer has warned could lead to her dismissal.

They want to fire an experienced nurse because she knows that a man is a man. Wouldn’t you … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on As the US hurtles toward autocracy.

The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.

It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part,

… Read the rest

Andrew Coyne at the Globe and Mail says the US is no longer one of the democracies.

Even now, as the United States hurtles toward autocracy – the petty grotesqueries perhaps tell the story better than anything else: a reporter barred from the White House for not using the name “Gulf of America,” President Donald Trump naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center by a “unanimous” vote of its board – the tendency is still to describe events in relatively conventional terms. For example, the “mistakes” that Mr. Trump is said to have made in his dealings with Vladimir Putin, of the United States as an “unreliable ally” under Mr. Trump, and so forth.

The tendency in journalism, that … Read the rest

Even the Spectator does it.

My original copy said “man” in the ladies changing room, but the trans cult which is essentially a men’s rights movement has captured the chocolate teapot that is IPSO so even the Spectator have to bow down to censorship. https://t.co/8rctcWNDPA

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) February 16, 2025

So the Spectator bows down to censorship AND obscures information that is central to the story. Saying “transgender doctor” is MEANINGLESS. The core fact in this whole conflict, which has been keeping a tribunal busy for days, is that a male doctor bullied a female nurse who objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. The fact that the Spectator alters Joanna Cherry’s writing such that … Read the rest

Alarming.

In December, more than a month before Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, The New York Times reported a blockbuster scoop: Elon Musk and his SpaceX company had repeatedly failed to meet federal reporting requirements designed to safeguard national security despite being deeply entangled with the military and intelligence bureaucracy. These included a failure to provide details to the government of Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders, the Times reported.

Those lapses had triggered a number of internal federal reviews, according to the Times. Perhaps most interestingly, the Defense Department’s inspector general had opened a probe of the matter sometime during 2024. The Air Force and the Pentagon Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for

… Read the rest

Occupy Democrats wrote on Facebook:

BREAKING: Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center implodes in humiliating fashion as droves of talented celebrities abandon the legendary performing arts center in protest.

Trump is radioactive with the people he wants to impress most…

Actress Issa Rae announced on Instagram in a brief statement that she is cancelling her “An Evening With Issa Rae” event slated for next month. Tickets will be refunded.

“Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through all mediums, I’ve decided to cancel my appearance at this venue,” she wrote.

Trump made himself chairman of the center on Wednesday. Earlier this … Read the rest

So progressive.

https://twitter.com/Hoer_jetzt_auf/status/1890832633065578667 The police were slow to arrive, but when they did they got the little pukes out of there and the film was shown.… Read the rest

Vance drops in on Europe to yell “You all suck!!!”

In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness.

Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda.

Well no, and that’s because the US now = Trump.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president had been expected to address the critical question of the Ukraine war and security differences

… Read the rest

So “diversity staff” have more valuable skills than…doctors?

There have been a slew of recent job postings offering roles in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at salaries that exceed specialist junior doctors.

They include an NHS England EDI secondment position covering the southwest of England offering a pro rata salary of £122,000 per year, and a head of EDI role at a London trust with a salary of £91,336.

Junior doctors earn a basic salary of between £36,616 and £70,425, while consultants receive between £105,504 to £139,882 per year.

You do have to wonder what skills EDI people have that merit that kind of pay. I don’t think the NHS is wrong to want “diversity” in the sense of having … Read the rest