Tom Nichols at The Atlantic on Fox News and its contempt for everyone:

Right-wing political and media figures regularly level the accusation of “elitism” at other Americans. But new revelations from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News and the Fox Corporation over claims of election fraud are reminders that the most cynical elites in America are the Republicans and their media valets.

Is Tucker Carlson out there picking tomatoes or cutting up chickens or driving a truck or teaching first grade or staffing an emergency room or chopping cotton? Tucker Carlson reads a script on camera, and he’s very very rich.

The garbled “elite” hoax has been a goldmine for the likes of Tucker Carlson and Donald … Read the rest

Also Tucker Carlson:

If you spend billions trying to make a place better, and it gets worse, you have an obligation to think about why. Maybe you’re doing it wrong. Maybe you’re not as powerful and clever as you thought you were. Maybe there’s a problem with your formula. 

But none of this ever occurs to people like Tom Nichols and Victoria Nuland and for that matter, Joe Biden. The more discredited they are, the more self-confident they become. They see every failure as evidence that their talents are more desperately needed than ever. What is this? Well, it’s called hubris.

Hmmmmmmmm. What does that remind me of. Something…it’s right there, I’ve almost got it. The more they get … Read the rest

Ok now I get it. Tucker Carlson on Fox tells us the Democrats hoaxed us about them there servers to cover up “The WikiLeaks scandal.”

The DNC’s servers, they claimed, had been hacked by the Russian military. The goal was to hurt Hillary Clinton, whom the Russians feared for her strength and wisdom, and to help Donald Trump, whom they controlled. Russia hacked the servers, in order to hack the election. That was their story. The Washington Post ran with it the first day, as if it were true.

Says the guy who runs with so many things, as if they were true.

But there was never any evidence that it was true. Almost seven years later, there is

Why did The Righteous People bully Christian Henson out? Because he “caused upset.” Oh dear. That’s very bad.

Christian Henson, the co-founder of British software brand Spitfire Audio, has taken to Twitter to share the news that he will no longer remain involved in Spitfire Audio, Pianobook and LABS operations. The announcement follows accusations of Henson espousing allegedly transphobic views.

…

Henson’s departure comes in light of a video essay posted by producer and content creator Jeremy Blake of Red Means Recording. In the video, titled ‘Spitfire Audio has a Transphobia Problem,’ Blake claims that Henson’s comments on transgender rights have caused upset among the music production community and Spitfire customer base. Spitfire collaborators Venus Theory and Skyscape

Another triumph for The Activists.

Henson is a media composer and the “episode” of course is something to do with accusations of “transphobia.” Now he’s being told NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

you quit instead of apologizing? bro. come on. there is nothing weak about owning up to mistakes. in fact that’s the strongest thing you can do. i urge you to challenge these prejudices with proper education on trans issues. we don’t want you to quit, we want you to see yourself.

We don’t want you to quit, we want you to stick around so that we can kick you some more.

Please, Christian, no… this isn’t what anyone, even your most ardent critics wanted. Please *talk* to people who

India Willoughby, dressed up in a little-girl round-collared blouse with puffy sleeves, says how persecuted he is.

'The difference is with these letters, there's obviously been a degree of effort and time & thought put into them, they've both been hand delivered.'

Broadcaster, @IndiaWilloughby talks about receiving a death threat letter, centred round the trans issue. pic.twitter.com/eHNGXHahzS

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) February 23, 2023

…and it’s just become so toxic, it’s horrible, I feel like this government have put a target on my back, I belong to nought point two percent of the population, which is like literally nothing at all – I feel hunted now, every story that appears in the British media is about trans people being

Why did Trump go to East Palestine? To pretend to be the guy who cares about East Palestine and the people who live there and the people who live in all the places like East Palestine.

Donald Trump is visiting the small Ohio town reeling from the toxic fallout of a Norfolk Southern Corp. train derailment in the hope of capitalizing politically on residents’ anger about the initial response by the Biden administration. But the trip also highlights the ex-president’s rolling back of rules that former regulators say could have improved rail safety.

He bragged constantly about getting rid of all the pesky regulations, as if they were swarms of gnats as opposed to measures to protect human health and … Read the rest

The Post on the Times:

The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.

The thing is…the topic isn’t just “sensitive”; it’s also…bizarre. An outlier. More bluntly, childish.

I was thinking the same thing while reading that dopy piece in The New Republic. I was thinking about how weird it is seeing adult publications and outlets like TNR and the Post and the Times, and the Guardian and the BBC and … Read the rest

The New Republic has a polemic by a trans activist named Brynn Tannehill.

So far this year, Republicans have filed over 300 anti-transgender bills at the state and federal levels, and we haven’t even reached the end of February…The American Principles Project, a religious conservative think tank and super PAC whose goal is to ban all transition-related health care (even for adults), is making a full-court press on Republican candidates to use transgender people as the number one talking point during the 2024 election cycle.

It always relies on the language tricks. “Transition-related health care” isn’t health care as normally understood at all, it’s something quite different. It’s medical intervention to make people’s bodies fit their fantasies about their … Read the rest

There are always so many theological puzzles with these things.

Why should fundy Christians be ruling the country and passing the laws and re-enslaving women?

Why, because they’re right, of course.

How do they know they’re right?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

But other bible-readers and god-obeyers have different views.

They’re wrong!

How do you know they’re wrong?

God said so! It’s all in the bible!

Then why doesn’t god do something about them? Why doesn’t god put a stop to the wrong believers – or convince them that they’re wrong? God can do anything, so why doesn’t he (you do consider him a he, right?) just impose his will? Why allow all this error to flourish? … Read the rest

Christian Nationalism is flexing its theocratic muscles.

Long a shadowy force in American politics, Christian Nationalism is having a coming out party. The movement seeks a fusion of fundamentalist theology with American civic life. “They believe that this country was founded for Christians like them, generally natural-born citizens and white,” says Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Whitehead emphasizes that the danger of Christian Nationalism to democracy is that the movement “sees no room for compromise — their vision must be the one that comes to pass.”

Because their vision is god’s vision and obviously there’s no compromising with god’s vision – god is absolute so god’s vision is also … Read the rest

Dang that Marjorie Taylor Greene really has her eye on the ball.

Yessir!! That’s what matters!!

Zelensky dresses the way he does in solidarity with the soldiers resisting Putin’s invasion. MTG of course knows that. What’s her point? That Zelensky is the bad guy and Putin is the exquisitely dressed hero? She’s going with that?… Read the rest

Can Laurie Penny really be this stupid? Surely not?

Perhaps that's part of why so many people find the concept so uncomfortable.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) February 19, 2023

As you can see, the origin is a conversation from last April, which got woken up today. I found LP’s reply as silly as most of her replies to most things, so I felt compelled to contradict her.

No it's why so many people find it superfluous.
"I'm NB because I don't identify with all the rules of my gender."
"You don't say! Neither does anyone else!!"

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) February 23, 2023

Her response? Oyyyyyy

That tweet.

— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) February 24, 2023

Oh ffs. Are you

Ok so the solution to my problem a few hours ago is excerpts.

It shall be so.

tigger_the_wing:

The hospital had a section for people who suffered severe traumatic brain injury. These people were particularly interesting. As their brains healed and grew new connections, and they learned to do literally everything all over again they became totally different people. They had no memories of their previous lives; those stories and photos which their families and friends showed them might as well have happened to someone else. I’ve had parents crying in my taxi because the son or daughter they thought would die a few years earlier…had returned to them a complete stranger.

Mike Haubrich:

Being transgender

Kevin McCarthy gave a whole lot of Capitol Hill riot footage to Tucker Carlson.

US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy is under fire for giving thousands of hours of footage from the Capitol riot to a Fox News host.

…

Access to the video has until now been restricted mainly to a congressional committee and lawyers for the rioters.

During his show on Monday, Carlson said: “Some of our smartest producers have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”

Great. Fantastic. We’re being governed … Read the rest

I hate it when we (the non-Fox part of the world) give Fox ammunition.

A children’s “chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds” and is targeted at kids ages 6 to 9 years old is set to release a book about Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021 who is now the new assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

Children’s book series about women who spoke up to do a book about a man. Progress!!!

Here’s me speaking up: this is bullshit.

The book, which includes an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, states it is the “perfect choice for kids

Remember Sam Brinton, the “non-binary” nuclear waste official who got busted for stealing luggage at airports?

One of his victims spotted him wearing her stuff.

pic.twitter.com/uEXVciYTUY

— asyakhamsin (@asyakhamsin1) February 23, 2023

That’s Sam in the photo on the right, carrying the TastyFreeze and wearing the beautiful top she designed and wore.… Read the rest

That whole Don Lemon thing? CNN talking head telling millions that women become worthless in their 40s? Pfft. Not a problem.

If you turned on CNN on Wednesday morning curious to see how Don Lemon would address his mini sexism scandal after his mini sabbatical and his “formal training,” the answer is that he wouldn’t address it, at least not on air.

A few moments before his show began, the news anchor tweeted that he appreciated “the opportunity to be back” and, to his colleagues and viewers, wrote, “I’ve heard you, I’m learning from you, and I’m committed to doing better.” Once “CNN This Morning” started, though, it was business as usual. Co-host Kaitlan Collins reported from

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Black and white thinking.

On the trans issue the thing I find most checkable in my thinking is what it feels like. Maybe the feeling is so intense, so agonizing, so impossible to get rid of, that…well, that what?

But at any rate, I can agree that I don’t fully understand what it feels like.

Neither can I. On the other hand, just because it feels like something doesn’t mean that’s what it is. People are not always the best judge of their own experiences. The explanations we reach for first might not be correct. We can be mistaken, or fooled; we can dream or hallucinate. Our subjectivity is … Read the rest

Originally a pair of comments by Tim Harris on Imperialism: not THAT bad.

I came across a historian (English) who was educated at Cambridge, and taught at universities outside Britain; he was much exercised by anyone paying attention to slavery, and said the proper field of interest should be colonial history, by which he appeared to mean rehearsing the old tales of Clive of India, Cecil Rhodes et al. I remarked that slavery was an integral part of colonialism so that I did not see how it could be ignored. I find nothing positive, morally or otherwise, about slavery, the constant use of violence, and the extreme violence that was used if slaves rebelled; and I find nothing positive … Read the rest