So, let’s make the pandemic worse, yes?

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) on Monday issued an executive order blocking local governments from requiring COVID vaccinations for worker, AZ Central reports.

What to do – reduce the spread of a lethal virus? Or increase it? Let’s go with increase.

Ducey’s move follows the Tucson City Council’s sweeping 6-1 vote that would “require that city employees must show proof of at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Aug. 24, or face a five-day suspension without pay and possibly higher health-insurance premiums.”

Why would the City Council do that? To reduce the spread of the virus. Apparently that’s a bad thing to do?

Matt Burdick, a Tucson city spokesperson,

… Read the rest

It’s surprising it’s taken this long.

The federal government has declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows. https://t.co/pnhnYtkkwp

— CNN (@CNN) August 16, 2021

The Colorado River has been shrinking for years. It’s all been a pretty massive mistake.

CNN goes on:

The federal government on Monday declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows.

States in the Southwest include Arizona, where the population of Phoenix continues to grow at speed, which is … Read the rest

Owen Jones pretending not to be a misogynist.

It's gruesome on multiple levels that anti-trans obsessives are jumping on the Plymouth atrocity, even though it doesn't take a genius to work out what 'incels' think about trans people.

But just look at the state of this. pic.twitter.com/5KdoIAAjiD

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) August 16, 2021

The thing about OJ is that he wants to pretend to be a feminist while still dismissing women’s concerns and protests at being appropriated or pushed aside or both by…guys like him.… Read the rest

Always a charmer.

Oh, cool then. Men slapping women “because they’re being racist” is just fine, and obviously not coercion.… Read the rest

Medical workers protesting…medical precautions.

They were hard to miss on the corner of a busy four-way intersection at the entrance to Winchester Medical Center: a group of about 20 people — many of them nurses, some in scrubs — protesting the hospital’s recent coronavirus vaccination mandate.

Yes, gee, why would a hospital want the staff not to spread a lethal virus?

The nurses’ employer, Valley Health, the parent company of Winchester Medical Center, had given them an ultimatum: Get the shot or face termination. And those standing on the street corner Tuesday had already made up their minds.

Valley Health announced a vaccine mandate for its 6,300 employees at its six locations on July 19, while offering religious and

… Read the rest

On the one hand, real freedom – freedom to get an education, to work, to leave the house, to travel, to be around other people, to be godless. On the other hand, fake freedom – to refuse to wear safety belts in cars, to refuse to heed warnings about building in flood zones or fire zones, to refuse to wear masks during a pandemic.

The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, will temporarily be allowed to enforce an order banning mask mandates, the state supreme court ruled on Sunday.

So the governor is free to force other people to risk their health by allowing third parties to risk the health of their employees and students or patients or customers … Read the rest

Making lists.

https://twitter.com/Amie_FR/status/1427236192186208260 https://twitter.com/CombatJourno/status/1427278390118256640

For one last day?

I'm hopelessly stuck in Kabul with my wife and child.

Like myself, hundreds of other journalists are also stuck here.

I have an 11—months old daughter.

Please pray for her safety.

— Mustafa מוסטפא (@CombatJourno) August 15, 2021

Asking for an interview is part of our job and there is nothing wrong with it. But it becomes a bit insensitive when you ignore someone is trying with life to protect his infant daughter and wife against Taliban.

That interview can line him up for execution.

Be human.

— Mustafa מוסטפא (@CombatJourno) August 16, 2021

… Read the rest

From Kabul:

Early on Sunday morning I was heading to university for a class when a group of women came running out from the women’s dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me the police were evacuating them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul, and they will beat women who do not have a burqa.

We all wanted to get home, but we couldn’t use public transport. The drivers would not let us in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman. It was even worse for the women from the dormitory, who are from outside Kabul and were scared and confused about where they should go.

Meanwhile,

… Read the rest

A freelance foreign correspondent writes

As the Taliban prepare to take over Kabul…
I was in the Afghan capital in 1996 at the time the Taliban arrived for the first time. They had no idea where they were going back then and stopped at the Red Cross HQ in the city to ask directions to the parliament building.

— Kim Willsher (@kimwillsher1) August 15, 2021

It was catastrophic for women and girls in the city. Within days all women were ordered back into their homes and told not to come out without a male relative accompanying them. Working women, even those in high ranking positions including judges and magistrates, were ordered to stay home. Women who did venture out were

… Read the rest

Sigh. I was interested, I wanted to read this, but then –

Mine is a predictable photo album – a baby transforms across a camera roll from limpid mole to Ian Hislop in leggings, kittens simper beside screengrabs of news stories, pink cake, a very big plum. It was the juxtaposition of three pictures that documented April though, that pricked my fury. A photo taken from our car of one of the anti-vaccine marches that shut down London sat beside a headline that pregnant people were finally being offered the coronavirus vaccine, then a picture of my son’s first birthday party.

Her son gets to be her son, Ian Hislop gets to be Ian Hislop, but pregnant women aren’t … Read the rest

I don’t think Owen Jones is the right guy to talk about it.

In fact I think he’s absolutely the wrong guy to talk about it. Not the only or the most wrong guy, but still the wrong guy.

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1426836683685773314

It’s entitled men who hate women, that’s what it is and what’s driving it. Owen too is entitled and Owen too hates women. The up front reasons for the hatred are different, but the gut instinct is the same.

Incel culture is driven by male entitlement Owen.

That is, male ppl thinking female ppl should centre their needs and wants, and that if women refuse, they are nasty, and what was it, oh yes, 'sadistic' bitches who should be punished.

… Read the rest

Solution to the problem of violent men found at last.

https://twitter.com/v_alalz/status/1426226545933291525

Make sure that women are given to these men – like so many apples or hats or tennis rackets.

Of course that is the arrangement in all too many places, like Afghanistan for instance, but that doesn’t mean we like to see men saying it as if it were just common sense.

And given to them for what purpose? For the purpose of sticking the penis is. Without a living breathing female human to stick the penis in, the man is too likely to step outside and kill some people.

You’d think by now the engineers could have come up with a reliable replacement, a nice programmable vagina to … Read the rest

Not then but now.

Heatwaves and the heavy rains that cause flooding have become more intense and more frequent since the 1950s in most parts of the world, and climate change is now affecting all inhabited regions of the planet. Drought is increasing in many places and it is more than 66% likely that numbers of major hurricanes and typhoons have risen since the 1970s…

And the consequences of humanity’s massive act of atmospheric interference are now clear: what is hot today will become hotter tomorrow; extreme floods will become more frequent, wildfires more dangerous and deadly droughts more widespread. In short, things can only get worse.

And they can only get worse faster. It’s happening fast. The … Read the rest

From Pliny:

See the original for sharper image.… Read the rest

Siberia is hot. Not just hot for Siberia, but hot – which makes it terrifyingly hot for Siberia.

It’s not just the Western region of the US that’s sweltering right now. Siberia in Russia is baking, and satellites are bearing witness to a brutal heat wave above the Arctic Circle. Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites captured a snapshot of land surface temperatures on June 20, and it was hot.

According to NASA, “Land surface temperature is how hot the ‘surface’ of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location.” The Sentinel image shows a peak ground temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) near Verkhojansk, a small town usually known for its extreme cold

… Read the rest

Remember that Times article I quoted from yesterday about Trump’s plan to fire the DoJ guy who wasn’t helping him steal the election? Remember how cautiously worded it was, so that it took extra effort and attention to grasp that they were reporting on Trump’s effort to steal the election?

On the other hand, today, we get Maureen Dowd:

Jay Gatsby gave big, lavish, new-money parties at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. He wanted Daisy to notice him.

Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.

On the one hand corrupt criminal evil … Read the rest

Debbie Hayton on Scotland’s “guidance” on how best to trans children:

Revelation, we are told, can come early in life:

Some young people are exploring their gender identity in primary school settings.

If a young person in the school says that they now want to live as a boy although their sex assigned at birth was female, or they now want to live as a girl, although their sex assigned at birth was male, it is important to provide support and listen to what they are saying.

Is it the same if they say they now want to live as a tiger? A dolphin? A tomato? Will it be important to take the children to the sea and throw them … Read the rest

This, exactly.

Every time I see this on the Tube, I wonder why women & girls’ daily experiences of male harassment and violence don’t count. pic.twitter.com/oLlpYdRRtp

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) August 14, 2021

So do I, and I see the lists all over the place. Race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity – the end.

YOU MISSED ONE

THE BIG ONE

THE ONE THAT APPLIES TO HALF OF HUMANITY… Read the rest

The recurring question – why are Republicans so hell bent on killing off themselves and their own fellow party-members?

Some Republican leaders are seeking to support Joe Biden’s efforts to beat the pandemic by encouraging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But others are actively trying to undermine the president’s offensive by embracing what critics regard as [a] lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism.

And that lethal mix is going to bite them in the ass a lot harder than it bites us.

These Republicans seem intent on scoring political points by appealing to a pandemic-weary’s public yearning to get back to something like normal life. Still in thrall to former president Donald Trump, they fiercely

… Read the rest

It’s women’s fault.

The gunman who killed five people in a mass shooting in Plymouth ranted at a 16-year-old girl that “women are arrogant and entitled beyond belief” in some of his final online exchanges just a few days before he embarked on Britain’s worst mass shooting in more than a decade.

Arrogant and entitled in the sense of not offering to have sex with him?

His comments and membership of the incel community again raise questions over the police’s decision not to treat the worst mass shooting in Britain since 2010 as terror-related.

It depends on how you’re defining “terror-related.” If you decide that it means having explicit demands addressed to specific governments, then the Plymouth slaughter doesn’t … Read the rest