The mobster vibe continues.

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson received at least one message tacitly warning her not to cooperate with the House January 6 select committee from an associate of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

…

“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition,” read the message. The redaction was Meadows, the sources said.

The message was presented during closing remarks at the special hearing with Hutchinson by the panel’s vice-chair, Liz

… Read the rest

Oh you thought men had been banned from competing against women in cycling? Hahahaha no there’s a clause that gets around that, which you can find in the archives in the filing cabinet in the basement behind the boxes of old tank parts.

https://twitter.com/janedougallbbc/status/1542557084495011840… Read the rest

The Telegraph has taken up the Wings Over Scotland story.

Women who question transgender ideology have been branded ‘farts’ as part of equalities training offered to civil servants in Nicola Sturgeon’s Government, it has emerged.

Doesn’t sound great, put that way, does it.

Workers who attended a workplace “trans 101” course were told the term was an acronym for “feminism appropriating ridiculous transphobe” and that women who oppose inclusivity measures were part of a “trans hate group”.

Staff who attended the training session, run by the Scottish Government’s taxpayer-funded LGBTI+ internal staff network, were also urged to study claims that biological sex is a “falsehood” invented by the medical profession to “reinforce white supremacy and gender oppression”.

The … Read the rest

Wings Over Scotland shares an item via a training course civil servants are being sent on by the Scottish Government. The obedient civil servants who attended got a followup “thank you and here is a long list of further reading” from one Jonah Coman; the item Wings shares is on that long list of further reading.

As you can see, one of the sites that staff are directed to is something called The Trans Language Primer. We thought you should see some of its content.

So Wings shares a lot of that content. It is, of course, grotesque. The grotesquery is amping up all the time, I guess because it has to. The demands and instructions have to keep getting … Read the rest

Oh and also let’s all just jump off a tall building.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, one of the most important environmental decisions in years.

That’s great. Global warming is spreading across the global sky like the eruption of Vesuvius as seen from Pompeii, and the Supreme Court says yeah let’s have more of that.

I wonder if any of them are at all bothered by thoughts of their children and grandchildren.

In a setback for the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change, the court said in a 6-3 ruling the EPA does not have broad authority to shift the nation’s 

… Read the rest

The Times drags Halifax:

Halifax has suggested that customers close their accounts if they oppose a policy allowing staff to display their personal pronouns on name tags.

Or, more accurately, if they oppose the absurd ideology behind posturing about “displaying” “personal” “pronouns.” We don’t actually care what banks allow employees to put on their name tags, but we do care about the idiotic truth claims such banks make in bragging about their Name Tag Pronouns Policy.

The bank tweeted a picture of a name badge with the pronouns she/her/hers and the caption: “Pronouns matter.” In response to complaints the social media team said that Halifax wanted to “open the conversation around gender identity. We care about our customers and

… Read the rest

The author of that revolting piece in the Independent about the chop shop in the woods was written by Io Dodds, who is – can you guess? – a man who says he’s a woman.

We’ve met him once before, a few months ago, when he wrote another piece for the Indy, this one explaining why it’s perfectly fine for Lia Thomas to cheat women out of prizes.… Read the rest

Where the hell have all the adults gone? Isn’t it supposed to be adults running institutions like universities and health services and councils and newspapers? Not reckless moody children?

‘Never ask permission’: How two trans women ran a legendary underground surgical clinic in a rural tractor barnhttps://t.co/deFJIZ0wRi pic.twitter.com/eEIPqL2yoV

— The Independent (@Independent) June 29, 2022

ExCUSE me??? “Legendary”? A “legendary” “underground” “surgical clinic” where they mutilated people’s genitals? Which The Independent is flattering in public? Are they drunk?

And, if you had entered that tractor barn between 2004 and 2006, you would have found a secret underground transgender surgical clinic run by two trans women with an autoclave and a cauterisation machine bought on eBay.https://t.co/deFJIZ0wRi

— The Independent

… Read the rest

But don’t try to tell these sadists that there’s no way to know who is a predatory male and who is a man who wants to live as if he were a woman.

https://twitter.com/laureningram/status/1541693928860172288

It makes her angry, more angry than she can say, that a woman who is a rape victim wants a women-only support group.

https://twitter.com/laureningram/status/1541699988190904320

Yes that’s nice but explain to us how you know that the man in question is not a predator. Saying “she is a trans woman” does not count as such an explanation.

Thank God that male born people will still be able to access spaces with the most vulnerable and victimised women who have been subject to the worst of violations at

… Read the rest

Can women have anything for women? No.

A woman who is suing a rape crisis charity says she felt unable to speak at a support group after a transgender woman began attending the same meeting.

“Sarah”, who says she was raped in her 20s, stopped going to the sessions, saying she became uncomfortable sharing details of her past with the group.

She says the centre could have offered separate groups, telling the BBC: “I think my case is about women’s rights.”

The charity, Survivors’ Network says it plans to vigorously defend the claim.

It says male victims of sexual violence are referred to neighbouring services, but trans women “are welcome into all of our women-only spaces”.

They shouldn’t be. Trans … Read the rest

Also Renato Mariotti:

7/ Courts have routinely set this bar very high in the context of political speech because the First Amendment broadly protects speech of that type.

A political statement by the President of the United States would be presumptively protected by the First Amendment.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 28, 2022

9/ The DOJ will understandably be concerned that the Supreme Court (particularly the current court) would find that Trump's speech was constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But this evidence should be enough to make them consider an incitement prosecution.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 28, 2022

The thing about the “they’re not here to hurt me” admission that I hadn’t fully taken in is that it … Read the rest

David French explains why Hutchinson’s testimony makes the case for prosecuting Trump stronger:

I confess that I’ve been skeptical that the January 6 committee would produce evidence that Donald Trump was directly criminally responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Certainly he was morally and politically responsible. There’s no credible argument that a mob would have stormed the Capitol if he had the basic decency to concede a race he clearly lost. 

At the same time, it’s legally quite difficult to hold a politician responsible for the violence of his followers.

It’s very difficult for non-lawyers to keep that distinction in mind – at least it’s very difficult for me and I doubt I’m special that way. It feels as … Read the rest

Aw yeah, fun times.

Mark Meadows backstage with the Trumps at January 6 rally. There were dozens of versions of this kind of opportunistic enabler in the bunkers of World War II Berlin and the entourage of Mussolini. pic.twitter.com/4Hj1O0ZvKi

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 29, 2022

A lot of cops were seriously injured thanks to these guys an hour or two after this snap was taken. Nice to see them feeling so perky.

The Case for Prosecuting Donald Trump Just Got Much Stronger https://t.co/qFm2fiJZsM

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 29, 2022

Let’s hope so.… Read the rest

Stupidity or malice or both?

For the anti-trans brigade complaining I've got comments turned off on that thread, here's why:

I'm not interested in debating the legitimacy of trans rights, because it's not a debate, it's a civil rights issue. Trans people exist, their right to exist needs protection.

— Dr Fern Riddell (@FernRiddell) June 28, 2022

But we’re not “debating the legitimacy of trans rights.” We don’t for a second disagree that people who call themselves trans should have human rights. What we’re doing is seeking clarity on what “trans rights” are. Are they human rights that trans people, like all people, should have? Or are they special, custom, bespoke rights that only trans people should have? If … Read the rest

Greg Sargent notes that the Trump headlines in the wake of yesterday’s hearing are brutal.

Yet Trump’s propagandists have found an answer. They are claiming Hutchinson’s appearance was a flop, based on the fact that a single anecdote about Trump — one barely related to the central allegations against him — is now being questioned by a handful of bit players in this saga who aren’t even offering this pushback publicly, let alone under oath.

…

Trump’s spinners have seized on Trump’s episode with the Secret Service. Hutchinson testified to the Jan. 6 select committee on Tuesday that Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, told her Trump erupted in fury as his detail refused to take him to

… Read the rest

Peter Wehner in The Atlantic:

This new account of what Trump did leading up to, on, and after January 6 was shocking, yet not surprising. His behavior did not amount to an abrupt about-face by an otherwise honorable man, but was the last link in an almost unfathomably long chain of events—vicious, merciless words and unscrupulous, unethical acts that were said and done, many in public view, in ways that were impossible to deny. All of the signs of Trump’s corruption and disordered personality were obvious for years.

And yet he was able to become the president. Without the popular vote.

Perhaps the case against Trump presented by the January 6 committee and previous Trump loyalists—by now so overwhelming

… Read the rest

LP is trying to sound intelligent again. This never goes well.

Pedantry is always regressive.
The idea that a word like ‘woman’ should only ever have one meaning – a meaning that is sanctioned by the state and enforced at every level of society – should horrify anyone who loves language and cares about freedom of expression.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) June 28, 2022

I wonder what she thinks she means by “a word like woman.” Like woman how? What other words are like the word woman? Man, girl, boy, I suppose. Will those do? Is that what she’s saying? The four words that name people of the female and male sex?

If so why do those words, in particular, … Read the rest

CNN underlines some points from yesterday’s January 6 hearing:

The reality of Trump’s intentions became clear to national security officials in real time as they learned the Secret Service was scrambling to find a way for the former President to travel to the Capitol while he was on stage urging his followers to march, according to National Security Council chat logs from that day that were revealed for the first time during Tuesday’s hearing.

The NSC chat logs provide a minute-by-minute accounting of how the situation evolved from the perspective of top White House national security officials on January 6 and, along with witness testimony delivered on Tuesday, contradict an account by Meadows in his book where he says Trump

… Read the rest

How it started.

Pronouns matter. #ItsAPeopleThing pic.twitter.com/vj9UdlBnLy

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

How it’s going.

Hi, I'm Lee. At Halifax, we strive for inclusion and equality. Giving our colleagues the option to add their pronouns on their badge, helps to create an inclusive environment for our customers and colleagues.

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

We strive for inclusion, equality and quite simply, in doing what’s right. If you disagree with our values, you’re welcome to close your account. ^AndyM

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

Ruthless anything for a buck capitalism in action!… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Freemage on But which people, which Americans, whose bodies?

“Karen” didn’t originally mean “aggressive female racist”. It originally (as used by the male black comedian who coined the term) was mostly about class-privilege (in, of course, a gendered way), about upper-middle-class women who made life tough for front-line service industry workers by complaining incessantly and immediately demanding to ‘speak to the manager’. So not about feminists specifically, and mostly focused on class, but with that sexist tag-along.

It didn’t really have anything to do with race until the New York Central Park incident, where the white woman calling the cops on a black man as a threat was considered the ultimate form of ‘speaking to the … Read the rest