Fox “News” and Trump and Dominion and a puppy.

Former President Donald Trump has been hit with a “soft ban” at Fox News, the Republican propaganda outlet that helped put him in the White House, several members of his orbit told Semafor in a piece published Wednesday. Indeed, while the network has lavished other 2024 GOP presidential candidates with interviews and airtime, Trump has not appeared since launching his campaign in November — even as the network’s own polling has him leading the primary. 

It always depresses me to think about this. One evil guy – Rupert Murdoch – is why we’re in this hideous ever-worsening mess. It’s Murdoch’s world and we’re just the fleas.

Airtime on Fox — the 

The sixth annual Women’s Writes marathon via Robin Buckallew.

Links to previous years at

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018… Read the rest

Yay another win for men invading women’s sports.

For Minnesota powerlifter JayCee Cooper, a trans woman who has been one of the prominent faces in an ongoing debate over inclusion and participation in sports, a four-year fight yielded a victory in court Monday.

Inclusion and participation in sports should not be interpreted as meaning inclusion and participation of men in women’s sports.

A Ramsey County, Minn., District Court judge ruled that USA Powerlifting violated portions of the Minnesota Human Rights Act through continued efforts to keep Cooper and other transgender competitors out of their events.

It isn’t about “transgender competitors,” it’s about male competitors invading women’s sports.

“Trans athletes across the country deserve the same rights and protections as

Mary Wakefield on the gender birthrate:

It was announced last week that another gender has been added to the list: nominalgender. Most news sites reported this in the sort of proud way a zoo might announce the birth of an exciting animal, a baby Komodo dragon maybe – as if the gender had somehow hatched and was waiting to be adopted. You are nominalgender ‘if your gender is so much just you that no one else can even experience it’, I read.

In fact no news sites reported this at all, so Wakefield is apparently doing satire. (There are a few mentions of “nominal gender” – two words, not one – but they’re not new and the meaning is … Read the rest

Amanda Marcotte wonders why Murdoch is not trying to settle the Dominion case when settling is what he usually does.

I suspect the reason Murdoch and Fox News seem determined to stick this out is that they are just that worried about what impact an admission of wrongdoing would have on their reputation with their audience. The possibility of a jury ruling in their favor, which they could spin as a total exoneration of their tactics, is so important to them that they’re willing to take a big risk that the opposite could happen. A settlement, however, would remove all doubt about who was in the wrong. 

…

[A]s the Dominion filings showed, internal machinations at Fox News were precisely

Woohoo International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate –

By promoting a man.

He shouldn’t be honored to be featured in this campaign, he should be horrified at the invitation, and telling them to feature a WOMAN for International Woman’s Day.… Read the rest

Pink News is SHOCKED AND APPALLED by the misgendering crime spree in Newham Monday. The very reasonable and informative headline conveys PN’s shock and appallment.

Non-binary councillor storms out of chamber after being shamefully misgendered

Oh how shamefully shameful. Also how adult of a councillor to storm out because a colleague forgot to pretend he has a luxury gender identity with luxury pronouns to match.

The incident happened when Newham councillor Danny Keeling, who uses they/them pronouns, was speaking against Labour’s budget plans at a full council meeting on Monday (February 27) at Stratford Olympic Park.

There’s no such thing as “using” X pronouns—everyone has to use them. Your using eccentric pronouns about yourself does not repeat DOES NOT … Read the rest

A whole entire line of Trump corruption I for one didn’t know about:

Donald Trump made more than a billion dollars while serving as president, including $14 million in income from his business interests in Indonesia from 2015 to 2019, according to a CREW analysis of his tax returns. During that same period, he earned $234 million in total from businesses in foreign countries with interests in U.S. foreign policy. 

That’s so interesting because the normal thing to do on achieving political office is to divest oneself of business interests, by at minimum handing them over to other people to manage and maintaining complete separation between self and those other people. The idea is to get rid of all … Read the rest

When they force you to say the words:

A professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio will be paid $400,000 after he was disciplined four years ago for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns. 

Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State, was reprimanded in 2018 after he would not refer to a transgender student by her preferred pronouns. He had a warning placed in his file and was told to change the way he addresses transgender students “to avoid further corrective actions.” 

So a university – a place with, one would hope, some concept of respect for truth – ordered a professor to pretend a male student was a female student by calling him “her.” Not urged, … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Night Crow on Wasting time.

Part of the issue is that in the moment, anger feels good; it feels like the thing to do. It overrides all other moral and rational brakes in the brain because it originates from our primordial, original limbic system: the brain center of our most automatic emotions like fear and desire.…

What happens is that anger can lead to similar “rushes” as thrill-seeking activities where danger triggers dopamine reward receptors in the brain, or like other forms of addiction such as gambling, extreme sports, or even drugs like cocaine and methamphetamines. Anger can become its own reward …

There is also the psychological aspect of ego fragility and injury, often

So what did David Paisley actually accuse Ceri Black of? Everything he could think of, it seems, some of it repeatedly.

Just one tiny sample:

Defaming Paisley by stating facts about his actions.

Defaming Paisley by reading out his own tweets.

Defaming Paisley by wishing him a happy Christmas, a soft pillow and a life full of love, as I wish for everybody.

Funny way to defame someone.

Causing significant “distress and anxiety” by reporting publicly that Paisley had reported me to the police.

Oh that’s a good one. Sparky takes a baseball bat to my knee, and I cause Sparky significant distress and anxiety by reporting publicly that Sparky took a baseball bat to my knee.

There’s much, much … Read the rest

What Rupert Murdoch did for Trump:

According to a new court filing from Dominion Voting Systems—which is currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion—in 2020, Murdoch gave Jared Kushner, then the first son-in-law and an adviser to the president, “confidential information about [President Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy…providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.” 

…

Given the way Fox treated Trump while he was in office—like he was the network’s lord and savior, and like its pundits had pledged a blood oath to him in the basement of its Sixth Avenue offices—the company’s owner having shared confidential information with Kushner probably seems neither shocking nor even that bad on the scale of

Well I’ll just have to give you the whole sequence. It’s too maddening and too illustrative to condense.

That Newham Council clip in full:
“I’ve been informed that I’ve been misrepresenting the councillor's name. I should have said ‘them’ rather than ‘he’. So I do apologise for that. And I think that’s what affected him, is it? Them, sorry. So my apologies to him. To them. Sorry.” pic.twitter.com/QGMXdBNGyA

— Laurie Wastell (@L_Wastell) February 28, 2023

The woman at the end on the right gets up and talks to The Misgendering Criminal to explain where he went so very wrong. Many silent seconds elapse while she informs him of this utter bullshit. He then says he’s been informed, but in doing … Read the rest

A local government meeting interrupted so that one narcissist can make a long-winded repetitive tedious speech about making sure to use the wrong pronouns for The People of Special so that everything anyone says will become more confusing, and not just making sure to do it but making sure to do it INSTANTLY so that the poor overworked narcissist doesn’t have to do it himself.

It keeps going.

After one council member urges the chair to "make this a safe space for trans and nonbinary members", a second says, "I do apologise, and I'll personally apologise to him when he comes back." pic.twitter.com/4muNMSNpm7

— Laurie Wastell (@L_Wastell) February 28, 2023

“You have the power to make this a safe space … Read the rest

Charles Pierce on Murdochs and Foxes:

If I had to guess, I’d say that the lawyers having the most fun these days are the ones handling the defamation suit against the Fox News Channel and the extended Murdoch clan. Every now and then (most recently on Monday), they get to release another tranche of documents related to the case that make Fox look like the malevolent entity it always has been; that make the elite political journalists who have stood up for them over the years look like unusually useful idiots; and that make the Murdochs look like the invasive predatory species they are. This is a public service of immeasurable value. The lawyers must be convulsing with laughter

The Guardian version:

A transgender woman found guilty of raping two women before transitioning has been jailed for eight years.

Is he a transgender woman though? Even in their terms? He “transitioned” after he was arrested. Does even the Guardian really think he really thinks he’s a woman?

Isla Bryson was convicted last month of raping two women – one in Clydebank in 2016 and one in Glasgow in 2019 – while still a man known as Adam Graham.

“while still a man” ffs. He didn’t magically change into a woman – he tried to get away with his sexual violence against women by claiming to be a woman.

She was found guilty of two charges of rape in

ITV on that rapist fella:

A transgender rapist who raped two women has been jailed for eight years at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Isla Bryson, from Clydebank, was sentenced to eight years in prison with a further three years on licence.

…

The 31-year-old was convicted last month of raping two women: one in Clydebank in 2016; and one in Drumchapel, Glasgow, in 2019; committing the offences while known as Adam Graham.

That is, committing the crimes before changing his male name to a female one.

Bryson met both the victims online, with prosecutors saying Bryson “preyed” on vulnerable women.

The case sparked an uproar after Bryson was initially housed in an all-female prison before being moved to

Trans epistemology:

In trans epistemology, statements that trans women who are convicted of violent crime will be barred from female prisons = statements that trans women are male predators. In trans epistemology the limiting clause “who are convicted of violent crime” becomes invisible, so that the statement becomes simply “trans women will be barred from female prisons.” Mind you, that is what ought to happen, but it’s not what the sentence Willoughby is fulminating about says. The sentence says one thing, and Willoughby claims it says quite another thing. That’s trans epistemology. … Read the rest

Simon Edge on the Guardian’s dereliction of duty:

It's now 17 days since the media first reported on @hannahsbee's book Time to Think, which chronicles in detail the medical scandal that led to the closure of the UK's only child gender clinic, GIDS. It has been covered exhaustively in virtually every paper. Except the Guardian.

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) February 28, 2023

If you fail to report on the biggest medical scandal of the century, even though the story is everywhere else, you are part of the cover-up. You are deliberately hiding the story from your readers, who may well treat you as their primary if not only news source.

This is inexcusable at the best of times, but

The struggle continues. Why why why WHY won’t people remember to call this man “they” or “them” whenever they refer to him? WHY????

I thought I was clear when I seconded the trans motion speech that I have had enough of the transphobia and misgendering in this chamber. EVERY WEEK it is now – this is now bullying. https://t.co/VJrD2n1xFR

— Cllr Danny Keeling 🌱 (@Dannny_K) February 27, 2023

My local councillor and chair of councillor just attempted to apologise to me by misgendering me once again. I am beyond annoyed and upset at this point. I should not come into this chamber to be dealt with like this.

I don't expect any discriminatory behaviour against anyone. https://t.co/a5aHPR0VvO

— Cllr Danny