Shaming but not at all surprising.

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.

Nothing about all the voter suppression bills?

The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged

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Voting rights shmoting rights.

Seizing on Donald Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election, Republicans have launched a brazen attack on voting, part of an effort to entrench control over a rapidly changing electorate by changing the rules of democracy. As of mid-February, 253 bills were pending to restrict voting in 43 states. Many of those restrictions take direct aim at mail-in and early voting, the very policies that led to November’s record turnout.

The filthy little truth behind all this is that Republicans can’t win in a fair fight, because there are only so many billionaires to go around.

Republicans have openly talked about their intentions. “Everybody shouldn’t be voting,” John Kavanagh, a Republican in the Arizona

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Separation of church and state? Whaaaaaaaat?

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defends preventing people from voting on Sunday, because God pic.twitter.com/69tYzgi4jU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2021

Look here, look at this dollar bill, it says right here “in god we trust” – and it says it on all the other bills too, the five n the ten n the twenty n the million, all of them. It’s always been that way! Well, since 1956, which might as well be always, because who cares about before that.

Also, by the way, Shabbos is Saturday and the one for Muslims is Friday and don’t Buddhists have it on Monday and Hindus on Tuesday and Jains on Wednesday and Sikhs on Thursday? So, … Read the rest

Unbelievable.

Aimee Challenor, kicked out of the Greens and the pervy Lib Dems is now an employee of Reddit and blocking my article from the site as well as kicking anyone off who shares it and banning them. Spread this around please and make it very public: https://t.co/62FhHsDAjO

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) March 23, 2021

Aimee Challenor! Of all people.… Read the rest

At 15, Chloe Clark’s identity has become a political flashpoint, questioned by those who have never met her or her parents https://t.co/ZhRaJZ5nWG

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 16, 2021

Uh huh, and the Washington Post would say the same if a boy of 15 said his “identity” was a tiger or a can of garbanzo beans or a daffodil or Peru or Mars.

Knowing what “sex” means doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one. Knowing that sex isn’t changeable the way a shirt or a name or a religion is doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one. Knowing which sex pushes out babies and which sex does not doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one or the other.… Read the rest

Uh…

Facebook, the platform that prevented people from putting the Women's Place website address in posts due to concerns over 'users' safety', is currently running an advert for clothing that promotes the killing of people who do not believe men are women https://t.co/n7EsJocFZ0 pic.twitter.com/isyY6G8Vop

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) March 22, 2021

It’s true, the page exists.… Read the rest

How interesting, another example of “No reasonable person would believe this/don’t take what we say seriously” from people committing public crimes against the public.

A senior Saudi official issued what was perceived to be a death threat against the independent United Nations investigator, Agnès Callamard, after her investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with the Guardian, the outgoing special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings said that a UN colleague alerted her in January 2020 that a senior Saudi official had twice threatened in a meeting with other senior UN officials in Geneva that month to have Callamard “taken care of” if she was not reined in by the UN.

…

The Guardian independently

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Ah so that’s how they’re going to play it – the “nobody could be stupid enough to believe the lies we told” defense. Bold move.

A key member of the legal team that sought to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump is defending herself against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” could have mistaken her wild claims about election fraud last November as statements of fact.

What were they statements of then? Not fact but…? Fill in the blank [______].

In a motion to dismiss a complaint by the large US-based voting machine company Dominion, lawyers for Sidney Powell argued that elaborate conspiracies she laid out on television and radio last November while simultaneously

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Interesting.

I suspect part of the reason trans issues have taken up such space in the Discourse is that LBGTQ orgs pivoted to trans issues after the legalization of gay marriage in 2015, and the media/culture followed suit. Definitely seems to be the case with HRC. https://t.co/6vKHa43oK6 pic.twitter.com/W60765iv1k

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) March 21, 2021

Charts by Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) March 21, 2021

The lesbian share is tiny now in both charts.

2015 is the year I gave up trying to be quiet.… Read the rest

Seth Abramson says enough with the low-rank insurrectionists, what about the people with real power?

Thus far, over 320 Trumpists have been arrested for their actions on January 6, 2021, and the DOJ says that more than 100 additional arrests are coming. But what many of us are most anxiously awaiting is not more arrests of lower-middle-class and middle-class Donald Trump supporters—though the massive video archive published by ProPublica confirms that many of these richly deserve indictment and incarceration—but rather the as-yet unaccountable elites who orchestrated the events of January 6.

For instance, we’ve yet to see what sort of accountability, legal or professional, awaits politicians like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. 

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It’s always always always about…not-you-but-me. Always about yes yes you have needs too, of course I get that, but

me me me me me me me me

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1372940871944011778

Man tells woman “Yeah sad about your miscarriage but you still have to let me join you in the toilets.”

https://twitter.com/NehandaMusic/status/1373027618652569609… Read the rest

GLAAD has a list of the damned, which it laughably calls its “Accountability Project.”

The GLAAD Accountability Project catalogs anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and discriminatory actions of politicians, commentators, organization heads, religious leaders, and legal figures who have used their platforms, influence and power to spread misinformation and harm LGBTQ people.

The Project reveals these individuals’ own words and actions, to help all Americans evaluate whether to vote for them, or quote them, or support their point of view. As journalists, newsrooms and platforms write stories or book guests for interviews and segments, they can check the record, add context to stories, or help decide whether a person with this history should continue to be given unchallenged air time or ink.

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On a less inflammatory subject – drone flies all but into an erupting volcano.

Seems like my video went full throttle! More on my YouTube channel pic.twitter.com/RzrRniXxPu

— Bjorn Steinbekk (@BSteinbekk) March 22, 2021

… Read the rest

The ACLU yet again.

But at least some of that legislation, and perhaps all, is not “anti-trans” or criminalization, it’s just codification of the formerly well understood principle that boys can’t play on girls’ athletic teams.

The problem is built in: the special favors being demanded by trans “activists” are so damaging to female people that it wouldn’t work to state them clearly, so the ACLU has to screen them with layer upon layer of inaccurate description. It’s a pretty disgusting practice for what used to be a respected civil rights organization.

The link takes us to an appeal from last month full of the usual obfuscation:

Transgender athletes want to participate in school sports for the same reason as

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Next weekend, a free screening of

wait for it

The Transvagina Diaries.

Yay! Nothing I want more than to watch a movie about homemade vaginas.

Isn’t that sweet, it’s “presented for National Women’s History Month – the story of men with fake vaginas. What’s that got to do with Women’s History Month? Well, not a god damn thing, but that’s the bliss of it. There is nothing more affirming than taking something meant for women and handing it over to men instead.… Read the rest

But it’s the holy holiday of Spring Break. You can’t expect people to obey rules about not spreading a lethal disease during Spring Break. That would be outright fascism, and also infallible proof of a Personality Disorder.

A state of emergency has been declared in the US city of Miami Beach over concerns large crowds gathering for spring break pose a coronavirus risk.

…

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said thousands of tourists had brought “chaos and disorder” to the city.

“It feels like a rock concert, wall-to-wall people over blocks and blocks,” Mr Gelber told CNN. “If you’re coming here to go crazy, go somewhere else.”

No because this is the beach. It’s a human right to … Read the rest

This kind of thing is why the trans ideology is convincing to so many.

As a fashion-obsessed teenager, I dreamed of working for Vogue. What girl didn’t?

The girl who doesn’t give a shit about fashion and has other things to dream of, that’s what girl didn’t. My guess is there are more than two or three of them. Fashion really isn’t so enthralling that half the population dreams of spending her working life thinking about it.

This was in the 2000s, and smartphones weren’t everywhere yet, so we’d leaf through the latest copy hungrily at the back of the class. I loved the pictures, the clothes, even the adverts. But most of all I loved the masthead and

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Catherine Bennett isn’t in the mood to be told to calm down.

Less than a day separated the arrest of a serving Metropolitan police officer on suspicion of Sarah Everard’s murder from the first suggestions that women calm down and put it in perspective…

A professor of criminology, Marian FitzGerald, thought it important to tell other women – twice – on the BBC, not to get “hysterical”. She was being interviewed by a senior man in an organisation which has evidently shared her reservations about women’s fallibility – were they worthy, even, of being paid the same as men? – and it duly went unchallenged.

The message, that women’s difficulties with the status quo can be just as troublesome

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Sweet.

A man confidently compares JK Rowling, and women who disagree with gender ideology about the nature of our own reality, to piles of discarded dirt.

This movement allows for the celebration of blatant misogyny. pic.twitter.com/YPyfylGV5j

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) March 21, 2021

Updating to add James Dreyfus’s parody.

pic.twitter.com/QZfN5IZbig

— James Dreyfus (@DreyfusJames) March 21, 2021

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Fair Play for Women explains to the bosses what Stonewall really is:

Dear leaders of public sector organisations,

You think you are doing the right thing, appointing so-called LGBT representatives and inviting Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and the like to write policy for you. It’s time to open your eyes. Your own people are doing the work of transactivists and you’ll be the one left carrying the can.

Because the problem is L and G and B are nowhere and it’s all about the T.

Stonewall is considered wrongly an expert rather than a lobby group with its own priorities and objectives

It’s an easy mistake to make. You need a transgender policy so you task your transgender equality manager to

… Read the rest