Yes that’s a good idea, let’s eliminate the FDIC and all other protections from banking.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to significantly reduce, merge, or even eliminate the top bank regulators in Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump advisers and officials from the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) inquired about the possibility of abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), according to the newspaper.

Good good good so banks can lose all our money and we have no recourse. Fabulous plan.

Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance

Nick Fish at American Atheists tells us in AA’a latest newsletter:

American Atheists doesn’t always weigh in on presidential cabinet nominations, so when we do, you can trust enough evidence has mounted to warrant a response. 

For example, we issued a statement last month regarding the selection of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. We received some flak for that, but as an organization that values reason and science, ignoring his long history of spreading dangerous misinformation is not an option. 

Granted, atheism is not the same thing as reason & science, but they are related. Theism is a form of Big Lie, so it’s not surprising that atheists can be interested … Read the rest

That’s nice. Invite a guy who killed a homeless person to the game. How very trumpvance.

A New York City subway rider who was acquitted this week of killing a homeless man during a confrontation on a train has joined US President-elect Donald Trump as a guest of honour at a popular American sporting event.

Daniel Penny, who became a conservative cause celebre, was pictured attending the Army v Navy American football game near Washington DC with Trump and Vice-President-elect JD Vance.

…

A jury cleared Mr Penny of criminally negligent homicide on Monday for using a fatal chokehold to restrain Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, who had been shouting at other passengers and asking for money, last

Well, you can call it a “light jab,” or you can call it a stupid childish insult from the stupidest, most childish, peak epically vulgar head of state on the planet.

US President-elect Donald Trump took a light jab at his Canadian counterpart on Tuesday, referring to Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada”.

Imagine Trump considering it a “light jab” if some wag said he was the governor-elect of Florida.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump remarked that Canada should become the 51st US state – something that was “in no way a serious comment”, said Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc, who accompanied Trudeau to the dinner.

“The president was telling jokes, the president was teasing us,” he

Yeah this is totally normal, this is not disgusting at all, women have no reason to object to this, Yellow Shirt dude just wants to have fun.

Not creepy AT ALL, do you understand?… Read the rest

I’m not surprised. I’d be happy to be surprised, but I’m not.

A defence of trans ideology really has sent people down some curious alleys, hasn't it? I'm quite surprised at the attempt to normalise the mocking of the trauma of sexual violence. https://t.co/wf6CDx4dl6

— Helen Staniland (@helenstaniland) December 14, 2024

Remember Joyce Carol Oates when Charlie Hebdo was given an award by PEN America? She protested the award. Not the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo, but the award to Charlie Hebdo.

Also, she’s a very bad writer.… Read the rest

Dim Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

President-elect Donald Trump has praised the polio vaccine as the “greatest thing,” but a lawyer affiliated with Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top health agency has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the vaccine used in the United States.

The lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates. Siri has been working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a vaccine skeptic and Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services – to choose officials to serve in the incoming administration.

Amnesty International is not an adult organization.

Once is enough.

Peaceful protest is NOT a crime.
Peaceful protest is NOT a crime.
Peaceful protest is NOT a crime.
Peaceful protest is NOT a crime.

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) December 13, 2024

… Read the rest

Amy Hamm in The National Post a couple of weeks ago:

Is it discrimination when doctors make care decisions that account for a patient’s extreme obesity? In British Columbia, astoundingly, it might be.   

A Canadian woman who identifies as an “unapologetically fat intersectional feminist” won her bid to bring an obstetrician to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) for alleged discrimination on the basis of her size and body mass index (BMI), of 46, after the physician referred her to a high-risk birth centre during her pregnancy. 

Sigh. He’s a doctor; he’s an obstetrician. He’s not some random person shouting insults, he’s not a bunch of people bullying her, he’s a doctor whose job it is know what’s a risk … Read the rest

Whaddya know, Wisey the Pretty is still at it.

The tundra has flipped.

The Arctic tundra is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by frequent wildfires that are turning it into a net source of carbon dioxide emissions after millennia of acting as a carbon sink, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Tuesday. This drastic shift is detailed in Noaa’s 2024 Arctic Report Card, which revealed that annual surface air temperatures in the Arctic this year were the second-warmest on record since 1900.

“Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts,” said Rick Spinrad, a Noaa administrator.

…

Human-caused climate change is also intensifying

Junior Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

What more is there to say? Trump’s choice for health secretary wants to kill or maim thousand … Read the rest

Newspapers should not lie to us.

And they should not lie to us even more when the lie is that women commit men’s crimes.

Manchester Evening News tells that very lie, repeatedly.

A judge has jailed a ‘dangerous’ woman for violent physical and sexual abuse.

The scare-quotes should be on “woman” on account of how the violent physical and sexual abuser is A MAN.

Angel Hill, 20, was handed an extended sentence for her crimes. Minshull Street Crown Court heard that Hill, who is transitioning from male to female, had demonstrated ‘violent, manipulative and controlling behaviour’.

He’s a man. Furthermore, he’s a man committing decidedly male crimes.

She pleaded guilty to assault by penetration, sexual assault, strangulation and threatening

Bad man refuses to get out.

State Opposition Leader John Pesutto has vowed to stay on in his role despite a damning Federal Court judgment finding he defamed ousted MP Moira Deeming and revelations the high-stakes case could have been settled for $99,000.

Pesutto was ordered on Thursday to pay $300,000 in damages and savaged over his time in the witness box in a 250-page judgment that found he injured Deeming’s reputation by repeatedly and falsely implying that she knowingly associates with neo-Nazis.

I think people of this type must actually persuade themselves that not believing in Magic Gender is pretty much the same thing as associating with Nazis. That’s how morally warped and confused they are.

Angry Liberal

Moira Deeming won her case!

Ousted Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming says she expects to rejoin the party room after winning her defamation case against Opposition Leader John Pesutto.

Ms Deeming brought the lawsuit against Mr Pesutto, alleging he had defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser in the wake of an anti-trans-rights rally on the steps of Victorian parliament last year that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

In the aftermath of the rally, Mr Pesutto failed in a bid to have Ms Deeming booted from the parliamentary Liberal Party — she was instead suspended for nine months.

…

On Thursday, Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan ruled Mr Pesutto had defamed Ms Deeming on multiple occasions, including in radio and TV interviews

They flop over the instant he looks in their direction.

FBI Director Christopher Wray became the latest public official to remove his own spine and dissolve into a puddle of genuflecting goo for the greater glory of MAGA with his announcement Wednesday that he’ll resign before Trump’s inauguration.

FBI directors are supposed to be independent, and Wray still has more than two years left on his term. But Trump loathes Wray, who, among other things, pursued an investigation of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Which is slightly ironic, because Trump appointed Wray in the first place.

As Trump mentions in his post, he plans to replace Wray with unqualified craven bootlicker Kash Patel,

It doesn’t though.

This is a game of political football over the health care of a vulnerable group of young people. It is despicably ghoulish, though unsurprising, that public facing GCs are behaving as they are.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) December 11, 2024

It isn’t “gloating” to be glad children won’t be given puberty blockers for frivolous reasons. Blocking puberty isn’t “healthcare” except in the case of premature puberty. Gender skeptics are relieved that the harm of blocking puberty will be stopped. Hines doesn’t agree that it is a harm, but she ought to be able to grasp that many other people do.

I suppose for people like her trans ideology is like being in a club or a … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

We have all heard trans activism, or wokeism in general, described as a cult. On the other hand there are people who seem to suggest that because these movements don’t exactly meet the formal definition of cult, there is nothing to learn from the study of cults that’s at all relevant to the issue. Regardless of whether or not you think TRAs are a cult, I hope we can all agree that this is not a very compelling argument. Even if we accept the premise, the conclusion clearly doesn’t follow.

Robert Jay Lifton provided what still seems to be the most widely accepted definition of a cult in his … Read the rest

Julie Bindel on the toppling of Pink News:

[T]oday’s revelations are grimly unsurprising: the outlet has reliably targeted any feminist who dares speak out publicly against the misogyny of trans activism, publishing a seemingly endless stream of baseless hit pieces about nasty, bigoted Terfs.

Many of the allegations against Cohen and James concern misogyny. Female members of staff say they were badgered to act as surrogates for the couple — a horrible abuse of power by bosses in a workplace, even if it were meant in jest. Given that some men have wombs, according to the ideology PinkNews promotes, it remains a mystery why they never asked any male employees to bear their child.

During my 18 months

The BBC reports further developments in the Benjamin Cohen/Anthony James story.

PinkNews director Dr Anthony James has been suspended from his job in the NHS, after a BBC News investigation heard allegations of sexual misconduct at the publisher.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said they made the decision to suspend Dr James from his role as associate non-executive director pending further information.

…

Following the publication of the investigation, more than 10 former PinkNews staff members have come forward to share their experiences of working there.

Their good experiences of working there, or the other kind?

… Read the rest