It’s always so funny when a man “jokes” about hitting a woman with a hammer. It’s even funnier when both parties are members of Congress.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joked about casual violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a glitzy fundraising dinner in Tennessee on Saturday night, according to several reporters who were at the event.

During a speech to around 1,400 GOP donors, McCarthy reportedly spoke optimistically about the Republicans’ chances for retaking the majority in the House following the 2022 midterm elections.

McCarthy went on to say that, should the GOP manage to flip the House in 2022 and if he were to become the speaker, he would find it difficult to resist hitting Pelosi

WHERE ARE THE GROWNUPS???

The American Medical Association says core information should be left off birth certificates because…[ ]

Sex should be removed as a legal designation on the public part of birth certificates, the American Medical Association (AMA) said Monday.

Requiring it can lead to discrimination and unnecessary burden on individuals whose current gender identity does not align with their designation at birth, namely when they register for school or sports, adopt, get married, or request personal records.

Enough already. “Gender identity” isn’t a thing. We are what we are. We don’t have species identity or time identity or geographic identity or any other kind of identity that contradicts the dull facts. Think of yourself as magical all you … Read the rest

How these things go. Remember yesterday the Head of Diversity and Incloooosion at Harvard something Twitter-denounced an academic for “transphobic and harmful remarks”? Like so?

As the Director of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force for my dept @HarvardHEB, I am appalled and frustrated by the transphobic and harmful remarks made by a member of my dept in this interview with Fox and Friends: https://t.co/kiBwkaqLGM#medtwitter

— Laura Simone Lewis, PhD (@LauraSimoneLew) July 30, 2021

All very public, with names and specifics, yeah?

But it turns out Laura Simone Lewis is the injured party here. She’s a grad student, you see, and the woman she pointed out for punishment on Twitter is not.

Also, it’s absolutely awful for her

The Attorney-General of Missouri. That’s right, not some random goon on Twitter, not that twitchy guy on the bus, not even a Fox News Personality, but the top law person in Missouri.

To the great people of Kansas City: I will be filing a lawsuit to protect your freedoms.

This mask mandate is about politics & control, not science. You are not subjects but citizens of what has been the freest country in the world & I will always fight for you. #NoMaskMandate https://t.co/4zvW1RQw5n

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) July 28, 2021

I see that claim from the other wackaloons – it’s not about the virus, it’s about control!!

Really. Why? To what end? How do you know? Why now? Why … Read the rest

More on the sentencing of Grant Karte:

Grant Karte threatened the 55-year-old [Joanna Cherry] with sexual violence in a series of messages on Twitter after she was sacked from the party’s front bench in February.

In one, the 30-year-old promised to ‘f**k you like you f****d Scotland,’ also leaving contact details behind.

In other words he promised to rape her. Promising to fuck a woman you’re bullying=promising to rape her.

He admitted sending the threats back in March, but sentencing waited while he got a psych evaluation.

Karte sent the five messages on the day Ms Cherry, 55, was “sacked” from the SNP’s front bench by the party leadership on February 1.

The first read: “You don’t know me

The SNP (or Sturgeon) is hammering the message home by appointing a “complaints officer” (have some scare quotes) who has a history of…you know the rest.

Reading the social media history of the SNP's newly appointed complaints officer doesn't inspire confidence in his likely neutrality.

— ruth wishart (@ruth_wishart) July 31, 2021

https://twitter.com/GraceBrodie/status/1421397269409062914

The Herald has the details:

THE SNP has come under fire after posts emerged from their newly-appointed complaints officer accusing their own party MP of “transphobia” and “bullying”.

Ricky Taylor posted online on Friday evening to say he was “delighted” to be joining the SNP’s headquarters at the end of August as the party’s new complaints officer.

He added: “It’s not going to be the easiest

Rape threats? From a fellow party member? Sorry, not our department.

Joanna Cherry has condemned the “SNP hierarchy” for deserting her after she was bombarded with rape threats by a party member for her stance on gender reforms and trans rights.

There are too many scare quotes in this article. The SNP exists and it has a hierarchy so I don’t see any real reason for the “” other than leaning on one side of the scale.

At Edinburgh sheriff court Grant Karte, 30, was ordered not to contact Cherry for five years and sentenced to a community payback order under which he will be supervised for 15 months.

Cherry, 55, a QC and the MP for Edinburgh

Return of the Tax Returns:

The Treasury Department must turn over six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns to House investigators, the Justice Department said in a legal opinion issued on Friday that most likely paves the way for their eventual release to Congress and potentially to the public.

Treasury says okie doke.

Yet even as the decision lowered a key barrier for Congress, it was unlikely to be the final word in the dispute. A highly litigious and determined protector of his financial records, Mr. Trump could seek an injunction in the coming days to try to stop the transfer, setting off a new round of legal wrangling that could take weeks or longer to

Now in case you’re wondering why men would want to identify as women in order to cheat at sport, Fair Play for Women provides a hint:

The IOC decided in 2015 that, for their purpose, a female is anyone who says they are, as long as their testosterone, the primary male hormone, has been below 10 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for the past 12 months. The typical testosterone level in females is less than 1 nmol/L. 

These Games are the first since these new rules applied. We know of at least three competitors, Stephanie Barrett of Canada, Chelsea Wolfe of the USA and Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, whose performance would not be good enough for qualification in the

Janice Turner on The Laurel Hubbard Question:

Samoa enjoys few sporting glories but it excels at weightlifting. Feagaiga Stowers, just 20, a child sexual abuse survivor who started lifting while living in a domestic violence shelter, won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She looked a cert for the 2019 Pacific Games too, but instead the podium was topped by 41-year-old trans woman Laurel Hubbard. Bumped to second place, Stowers and team mate Iuniarra Sipaia, who took bronze, hung their heads in dismay.

While inferior athlete Laurel Hubbard loomed over them in cheating triumph.

Back in Samoa, the response was more baffled than furious. The prime minister asked how it could be fair that this New Zealand fa’afafine was

Nope nope nope.

Let’s be clear: if you respect diverse gender identities & aim to use correct pronouns, then you would know that people with diverse genders/sexes can be pregnant incl Trans men, intersex people & gender nonconforming people. That isn't too hard for medical students to understand

— Laura Simone Lewis, PhD (@LauraSimoneLew) July 30, 2021

It’s not too hard for anyone to understand, but it’s not true. It’s just trendy jargon.

I respect Carole as a colleague & scientist. But this dangerous language perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people within the med system. It directly opposes our Task Force work that aims to create a safe space for scholars of ALL gender identities and sexes.

The NY Times tells us:

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.

In other words he “pressed” them (meaning bullied, screamed at, threatened them) to lie about the election to enable him to steal it.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda.

Not to mention … Read the rest

Tom Nichols used to admire J. D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy, and now does not.

Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

Instead of a truth-teller in his own community, Vance

Originally a Miscellany Room post by Sastra.

Well, it appears I’ve finally been banned on Friendly Atheist, presumably for arguments I was making on a post about transgenderism. And what I’m guessing is 5 years of comments have all been marked as “spam” and completely erased. There’s no trace of me left. It is as if my very existence is being denied. Heh.

I’m not sure who banned me; it could have been a new moderator, or one of the other people who post articles on the site. I’ve written to ask, and questioned the spam designation elsewhere. I’m not terribly surprised, but do wonder why the absolute blackout, and not even a suspension or, best compromise, making any … Read the rest

So we’re just removing the word “women” from the language entirely now?

One front in the vaccine wars:

On July 22, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said: “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” when asked why Alabama leads the nation in unvaccinated persons. “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. We’ve got to get folks to take the shot. The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID. There’s no question about that.”

So, of course, Team Antivax rushed to say what a monster she is.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler said: “What Gov. Ivey has forgotten – or never knew – is that those who are not vaccinated include a huge number who do not trust the government.  A governor pushing so hard for

Goooooood grief.

Bonds brings in ‘Cheer Bleeders’ to show off period underwear range

Excuse me?

No, it’s not a joke. Cheerleaders=Cheer Bleeders, rah rah rah.

Bonds has launched its latest Bloody Comfy Period Undies campaign, Cheer Bleeders, featuring a specially created cheer team dedicated to making all Australians who menstruate feel more empowered before, after and during their period.

All Australians who menstruate…you mean women and girls? Oh no no no no no no no good god no. That would never do.

The integrated campaign, created in partnership with Special Group Australia, showcases the Bonds’ Cheer Bleeders wearing Bloody Comfy Period Undies as they cheer about different aspects of periods using the tagline ‘Cheer through the Bleed’.

What aspects would … Read the rest

Chrissy Stroop on evangelicals and vaccine-refusal:

As many exvangelicals have been trying to get the American mainstream to understand for years now, evangelical subculture is essentially ground zero for America’s other pandemic—disinformation. Conservative, mostly white evangelicalism, which represents a fear-based, authoritarian outlook on a social scale, has constructed a parallel society, mediated through churches, Christian publishing, homeschooling, Christian schools, Christian colleges and universities, and numerous parachurch ministries, in which certain sacrosanct “truths” are never questioned. When reality contradicts the truths that define group membership, the evangelical community circles the wagons and puts the power and influence of its tight institutional network behind the assertion that, in fact, the emperor is wearing clothes, and anyone who says otherwise