Biden gave a speech about voting rights, which is nice and all but it’s not going to do anything.

Some Democrats hope that presidential attention will persuade Congress to pass a voting-rights bill that outlaws the new Republican voting rules. But that’s unlikely. Congressional Republicans are almost uniformly opposed to ambitious voting-rights bills. And some Senate Democrats, including Joe Manchin, seem unwilling to change the filibuster, which would almost certainly be necessary to pass a bill.

Well. Let’s get real. Congressional Republicans are almost uniformly opposed to any voting-rights bills at all, except the kind that restrict them. The more people who vote, the fewer Republicans who get elected. They don’t gerrymander for the fun of it you know.… Read the rest

They’ve got to stop doing this. News from CP24:

A woman is facing charges after she allegedly sexually assaulted a child in a Toronto park two months ago and police believe there may be other victims.

What woman? This “woman”:

Just stop.

According to police, a six-year-old boy attended the Walter Saunders Park, near Dufferin Street and Eglinton Avenue West, on May 20. At that time, the boy was sexually assaulted, police said.

How would a woman even go about sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy? What would that even mean? For a man it’s all too obvious how.

In a news release issued on Tuesday, police said investigators believe there may be other victims.

But they will have trouble … Read the rest

Trump in the bunker:

President Donald Trump was furious after reports last year said he and his family hid in the White House bunker during the George Floyd protests, and he said whoever leaked that information should be executed, according to a new book by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender.

Executed, sure, why not.

In “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” Bender wrote that Trump seethed about the bunker story during a meeting with military and law-enforcement officials and West Wing advisors, according to CNN, which published excerpts from the book on Tuesday.

According to CNN, Bender wrote that the president “boiled over about the bunker story as

The usual stupid hodgepodge of Kinds of Anti-Racism I Don’t Like labeled “Critical Race Theory” as if the two were the same thing.

In schools across the country, woke teachers and left-wing parent activists are promoting critical race theory, a disturbing philosophical framework founded in radical, racially charged concepts about culture, society, and government.

No, you mean they’re promoting various innovations in teaching about race and history and racism. That’s not what Critical Race Theory means.

According to critical race theorists, virtually all of society’s problems should be viewed within the context of alleged systemic racism, which all people have a solemn duty to root out at any cost — including by promoting other forms of racism.

Ibram X. Kendi,

Speaking of men, and men relative to women, and women relative to men – James Innes-Smith finds there are far too many women on the BBC these days.

Is it any surprise that research carried out by the corporation for its annual report found that more than a quarter of men feel that the BBC ‘no longer reflects people like me’?

“People like me” meaning what? Just, men? Or is there more to it than that? If there is, Innis-Smith overlooked it.

In a concerted effort to redress gender imbalance men are gradually being airbrushed out. Across much of the BBC men have become something of a rarity.

Really? Really? Really?

I don’t believe it. I don’t believe men … Read the rest

More on the NZ Herald article, which covers a lot of ground.

In Wellington City, a Speak Up For Women billboard has been removed from the CBD today.

In a statement Go Media general manager Simon Teagle said it was removed as soon as the company started fielding calls from offended New Zealanders.

He believed the billboard could be in breach of the Advertising Standards Authority’s codes.

A billboard that gives a dictionary definition of the word “woman” could be in breach of the Advertising Standards Authority’s codes? They must be very strange codes.

“Go Media is an inclusive, locally-owned New Zealand business and we support all communities. While we believe in freedom of speech, we do not condone

The NZ Herald reports on the official bullying of a feminist group:

Lower Hutt’s Mayor has apologised after saying controversial group Speak Up For Women could hold one of their events in a council waste bin.

“Controversial” group aka feminist group.

Also he didn’t really apologize.

Meanwhile, one of the group’s billboards has been taken down from one of Go Media’s central Wellington sites.

That is, misogynist bullies got it taken down.

These developments come on the same day as Wellington City Council will light up the Michael Fowler Centre in the colours of the transgender flag timed for when the group holds an event there.

In other words deliberately timed to spit in the faces of feminist women … Read the rest

This is pretty amazing.

Wellington, NZ

Day 1 – Day 2

The fact that trans activists have the clout to take down a billboard with the definition of the word "woman", which they claim is "hate speech", merely proves we must continue to fight for women's rights, even to have a word to define us. pic.twitter.com/NYzmPsGfDJ

— ystrïya (we/us) 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@yatakalam) July 13, 2021

Stand Up For Women put up the definition of “woman” billboard and fans of trans ideology promptly bullied the relevant people into removing it.

So, women are now the class enemy, women are the arrogant dominant class, women have all the privilege and power, and it’s men who have to struggle to be heard…by making … Read the rest

Apparently labor laws and safety laws don’t apply to prisoners.

Temperatures reached 97 degrees on June 21 at the French Robinson Unit prison the day Seth Donnelly collapsed. The Texas Observer reported Seth passed out during his prison job of training attack dogs — running around in a 75-pound ​“fight suit” while the dogs tried to bite him. Seth’s internal body temperature was 106 when he reached the hospital, where doctors eventually took him off life support. He died on June 23, and his preliminary autopsy lists multiorgan failure following severe hyperthermia.

97 degrees. A padded suit weighing 75 pounds. It’s worthy of the tunnels at Camp Dora.

Danielle, who asked for In These Times to withhold her

Powell attempted the Sheer Volume defense.

Powell insisted the volume of the suit they filed last November was testament to the extent of research and investigation the attorneys did.

“We filed a massive and detailed complaint in federal court that doesn’t even require us to append affidavits to it,” Powell said. “The very fact we filed 960 pages of affidavits with the complaint shows due diligence on our part. … The only way to test that is in the crucible of a trial or an evidentiary hearing,” she added, noting that the judge had thus far denied such a hearing.

Listen, it’s millions of words of bullshit, surely that counts for something.

“Volume, certainly for this court, doesn’t equate

In Trump lawyers news:

A U.S. judge on Monday appeared likely to reprimand Sidney Powell, a former campaign lawyer for Donald Trump, and other attorneys over a lawsuit they filed in Michigan seeking to overturn Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory.

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in Detroit suggested the pro-Trump lawyers should have investigated the Republican former president’s voter fraud claims more carefully before suing.

“Should an attorney be sanctioned for his or her failure to withdraw allegations the attorney came to know were untrue?,” Parker said during a court hearing via video conference. “Is that sanctionable behavior?”

You’d hope so.

Parker held the hearing to determine whether Powell, Lin Wood and other pro-Trump lawyers should be disciplined

In further apocalypse:

For nine straight days, waves of dead fish have washed ashore along downtown St. Petersburg and Coquina Key [Florida], plaguing residents with the intolerable stench. 

City officials say over 100 miles of coastline have been impacted, with the worst areas being along the east and southeast coast of St. Pete — Tierra Verde to Gandy Blvd. 

The city is working to clean up the mess and has collected over 25,000 dead fish in the past 10 days, along with 15,000 dead fish on July 9, alone. The number of dead fish amounts to over 15 tons.

Much of Florida is doomed because of the rising seas. I don’t recommend moving there.… Read the rest

Stephanie McCrummen at the Washington Post reports on

a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

It includes some of the largest congregations in the nation, housed in the husks of old Baptist churches, former big-box stores and sprawling multimillion-dollar buildings with private security to direct traffic on Sundays. Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags.

And this is why we can’t have nice things.

This is the world of Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula

It’s a bit late for the tut-tutting now.

Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have been accused of hypocrisy over their stance on racism in football, after they condemned the abuse of three black England players but previously refused to criticise fans who booed the team for taking the knee.

…

Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative peer and former co-chairman, sent a public message to Patel, the home secretary, calling on her and all Conservatives to “think about our role in feeding this culture in our country”.

“If we ‘whistle’ & the ‘dog’ reacts we can’t be shocked if it barks & bites,” she tweeted. “It’s time to stop the culture wars that are feeding division. Dog whistles win votes

The joys of sport.

England manager Gareth Southgate said the racist abuse aimed at Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka after the Euro 2020 final defeat by Italy was “unforgivable”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Football Association also condemned it.

All three players missed penalties in the 3-2 shootout loss and were targeted on social media after the game.

Patriotism innit.

Updating to add:

To help restore balance to Twitter, here is Marcus Rashford helping at a Manchester food bank with his mother Melanie. pic.twitter.com/3301sQd03J

— Pádraig Belton (@PadraigBelton) July 12, 2021

… Read the rest

The Death Party intensifies its push to kill more of us:

The Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Dallas this weekend has been full of the usual moments from the Republican Party’s most outrageous figures trying to be the most performatively provocative. Notable, however, has been the drumbeat of anti-vaccine rhetoric that has pervaded CPAC’s annual gathering—even as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to build steam across unvaccinated parts of the country.

Because what, half a million deaths isn’t enough for them?

Fauci is, naturally, horrified.

Fauci was reacting to a talk in which anti-vaxxer Alex Berenson was roundly cheered by a CPAC audience for saying the US government had failed to “sucker” 90 percent of Americans into

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine:

Rich Anderson, the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party[,] wrote to the president of the University of Virginia yesterday. Anderson begins by explaining, “I understand the commitment that public servants make to serving with integrity, dignity, respect, and honor in their taxpayer-funded roles.” The letter concerns Donald Trump, though not in a way that follows intuitively from the premise that public servants must act with integrity, dignity, respect, and honor.

Anderson’s letter demands UVA open an ethics investigation into Larry Sabato, the director of the school’s Center for Politics. Sabato’s alleged ethics violation is a series of mean tweets from his personal account, concerning Donald Trump.

“Not an ethics violation, Your Honour.”… Read the rest

Milli Hill’s I will not be silenced is also relevant to that “mind your own fucking business” tweet of Christa Peterson’s. It is our fucking business; of course it is.

[T]oo many women have been silenced, and I don’t want to join them. There are conversations about women’s rights, women’s bodies, and the words we use to talk about women’s issues, which need to be had, but which have been made taboo in our current culture. And this is not healthy. Worse still, women like me have been used as an example to others of what happens to you if you raise questions. And others have seen these public draggings, and decided to keep quiet themselves. This kind of behaviour,

No, that’s not right.

There are a lot of reasons it’s not right, but to take just one central one – that amounts to telling women that “gender” is none of our business, that the social rules and constraints imposed on women are none of our business, that the perceived inferiority and subordinate nature of women is none of our business, that feminism is none of our business. That claim is obviously absurd, and also obviously insulting. She might as well tell workers that unions are none of their business.

It’s especially repellent because she is a graduate student in philosophy. If gender is none of women’s business then everything is none of philosophy’s business – so what is she … Read the rest

This is RT, Putin’s rag, so take that into account, but I can’t find other news sources reporting on it yet:

London borough apologises for having actor in bare-bottomed monkey costume with mock genitalia encourage kids to read more books

Long but compelling headline, do admit. If that doesn’t encourage kids to read more books I don’t know what will.

Officials in London’s Redbridge borough were left red-faced after a library event designed to promote reading among kids featured a monkey character in a costume that included dangling fake genitalia and exposed buttocks.

The costume and the actor wearing it came from Mandinga Arts, a troupe of street performers based in Clapham South that has “a distinctive style bringing together