A new nightmare looms.

Speculation about the post-White House career of Ivanka Trump is now centered on Florida, where the soon to be ex-first daughter and senior aide to her president father has reportedly bought an expensive plot of land for a house and may be considering a run for Senate.

She’s a twerp, she’s pig-ignorant, she defends everything her evil daddy does, she’s corrupt, and she’s a criminal. Also she’s entitled, arrogant, self-dealing, empty-headed, and narcissistic. Other than that, awesome choice for the Senate.

Ivanka Trump is not the only member of her family potentially eyeing up a political future post-Trump. Donald Trump Jr – who is popular with his father’s conservative base – is often seen as

Just a few responses…

“Jill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.” Really, is there no end to men affronted by women’s authority? Is it worse with women who’re successful (and so, often, legitimized) by standards optimized for male success? SO TIRESOME. https://t.co/oCUl3dYBJZ

— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) December 12, 2020

A man who does not have a PhD says Dr. Jill Biden is “fraudulent” and “comic” to use her title because her doctorate isn’t in medicine.

✔️ Filed as “Men threatened by women smarter than them.”https://t.co/PuYV5P7yK4

— Trish Zornio (@trish_zornio) December 12, 2020

https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/1337796502865973258 … Read the rest

It turns out the Proud Boys like violence. Who knew?

Thousands of maskless rallygoers who refuse to accept the results of the election turned downtown Washington into a falsehood-filled spectacle Saturday, two days before the electoral college will make the president’s loss official.

The Post sounds a bit fed-up. I don’t blame it.

In smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be

Originally a comment by Papito on Kiddo.

As one whose book-learning is also piled higher and deeper, I only doctor when doctored at. I recall a work colleague introducing a visiting scientist as Dr. Fulano, and I said pleased to meet you Dr. Fulano, I’m Dr. Zutano. My colleague did a double-take before he recalled that my amazing skillz were acquired in the school of hard books.

I taught at a few universities, and I much preferred teaching at a state university over the more highly ranked university up the road. I found the students more engaged, more serious, more respectful, and more likely to actually use what I was teaching. Apparently the feeling was mutual, as the dean … Read the rest

From the Daily Beast:

Federal law enforcement authorities say they are aware of a website that sprang up over the weekend and began doxxing federal and state government officials at odds with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

That is, government officials doing their jobs as opposed to helping Trump trash everything.

The site, which appears to have been created on Sunday, contains the home addresses, pictures of homes, personal emails, and photos of state and local officials who have pushed back on or questioned the president’s legal campaign.

The FBI confirmed it knows about it but wouldn’t say anything more.

Among the officials targeted—literally—by the enemiesofthepeople website were Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Doug Ducey

What was that we were just saying about men patronizing women? That Diana (formerly David) Thomas thinks it’s nbd as long as women get their own way?

He wouldn’t know, of course. He wouldn’t know how corrosive the effect is, because he still knows it doesn’t apply to him, even if he doesn’t fully realize he knows it.

Anyway, men patronizing women.

He obviously did it on purpose, with malice aforethought. It’s obviously calculatedly insulting, since he can’t possibly think she wants to be called either “Jill” or “kiddo” by a conceited condescending shit like him.

There was a time when I made an effort to find Joseph Epstein interesting. I found some of the same things irritating as … Read the rest

Clair Woodward on “competitive womaning”:

Diana Thomas is writing in the Telegraph about her week. Whizzing from hairdressers to lunch with a friend, to a plastic surgeon to a doctor. It’s a whirl!

Diana, of course, is a trans woman.

This week, after a chat with the hairdresser, it’s that lunch with a girlfriend. “Conscious of the drive home, I only drink one small glass of rosé, but consume a delicious dish of hake in a stew of tomatoes and mussels, mopped up with freshly baked bread and followed by a gooey chocolate pudding with hazelnut ice cream. Amanda sticks to a strict bread and gin diet, which could become all the rage.”

That’s how women think and … Read the rest

Trump says he is declassifying all the things, and Boris Johnson appears to be hoping for a war with France.

Senior Conservatives have criticised Boris Johnson’s handling of the Brexit trade negotiations and his threat to deploy Royal Navy gunboats to patrol UK fishing waters in the event of no deal.

With the Sunday deadline for reaching an agreement fast approaching, the Ministry of Defence confirmed four 80-metre armed vessels had been placed on standby to guard British waters from EU trawlers from 1 January, in the absence of an agreement on fishing rights.

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, called the threat of deploying gunboats “irresponsible”, when attention should be focused on striking a

Again – closing polling places in counties where there are too many of those people.

Four of the 10 most populous counties in Georgia are reducing the number of locations where people can vote early in the state’s Senate runoff races, prompting outcry from civil rights and voting rights organizations.

And who lives in those counties? Shhhhh – it doesn’t do to say it out loud.

In Cobb County, the state’s third most populous county with more than 760,000 residents, election officials have announced five early voting locations, fewer than half of the 11 used for early voting ahead of last month’s general election.

Advocates warned that the reduction of early voting sites will particularly harm Black and Latino

The revelation in this Tavistock study – that “blockers” and hormone-switches don’t fix the psychological misery – is shocking and scandalous.

I’m still struggling to comprehend how GIDS could have sat on data for 9 years that showed puberty blockers do not improve children’s mental health & may in fact make it worse, when alleviating psychological symptoms is the basis for treatment. How is this not a scandal?

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) December 12, 2020

Alleviating psychological symptoms is the basis for the treatment and the PR for it and the marketing angle for it and the political justification of it. It’s the tool the pro-trans fanatics grab to beat skeptics over the head with. It’s the whole thing.… Read the rest

This seems as if it could go wrong.

I have been doing this. I agree! https://t.co/1YTTGwxlxx

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

… Read the rest

The misogynist barrister again.

"The most vociferous, high-profile and politically influential anti-trans group has turned out not to be the well-funded religious right or the supporters of Nigel Farage but a phalanx of wealthy, white, middle-class cis women (of whom billionaire J.K. Rowling is queen)."

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 11, 2020

Wealthy white middle-class “cis” he says – but most are far from wealthy, and plenty are not white and not middle-class. Jolyon on the other hand…… Read the rest

Is the edifice starting to topple?

The BBC reports on a study the Tavistock clinic just published:

All but one child treated for gender dysphoria with puberty-blocking drugs at a leading NHS clinic also received cross-sex hormones, a study has shown.

…

The Tavistock and Portman Trust has argued the treatments are not linked.

The study began in 2011 and enrolled 44 children aged between 12 and 15 over the following three years. At the time, only those aged 16 and over were eligible for puberty blockers in the UK.

When BBC Newsnight covered the study and its preliminary findings last year it highlighted how previous research suggested all young people who took blockers went on to take cross-sex

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on SCOTUS to Trump: No.

OMG, I just came across the Most Trump Thing, Ever.

Remember that story a while ago about how Trump’s attorneys mistakenly filed a case in the Court of Federal Claims, instead of the District Court for the Western District of Michigan? The next day, they filed in Michigan, and the Federal Claims court dismissed the action there.

Well, apparently, Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to the Clerk of the Federal Claims court requesting a refund of their $400 filing fee, on the grounds that the federal courts’ electronic filing system had screwed up and caused the error.

Yes, the campaign that has raised many millions of dollars and … Read the rest

Now here’s something I didn’t know – that Trump tried to say it was the country who was slandering a woman he assaulted, not Trump the person bro. He tried to make all of us responsible for his lies and obstruction.

Lame-duck President Donald Trump has used “every stall tactic in the book” in a “desperate” attempt to avoid famed columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of defaming her by denying that he raped her, Carroll’s attorneys told a judge on Friday morning.

The remarks were made at a hearing that Trump lodged an eleventh-hour objection to avoid. At 7:57 p.m. on Thursday night, Trump’s counsel filed a letter to stay all proceedings while they appeal of a

First, the attempt:

President Donald Trump and 17 U.S. states on Wednesday threw their support behind a long-shot lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn his election loss by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four states.

Dear Supreme Court: please throw out the votes in four states, love Don.

Trump, defeated by President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election, filed a motion with the court asking the nine justices to let him intervene and become a plaintiff in the suit filed on Tuesday by Republican-governed Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

…

In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the

Originally a miscellaneous comment by Bjarte Foshaug.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been reading up on the topic of democratic breakdown lately, if not to look for hope, then at least to move the sense of existential dread from a purely visceral “gut” level to something that can be understood and dealt with intellectually. These books include:

The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder

The People vs. Democracy by Yascha Mounk

Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Snyder (who had a major best-seller a couple of years ago with his short pamphlet “On Tyranny”, another must-read!) spends a lot of time on the conflict between Russia and … Read the rest

Sneaky: if you just say “trans” then it sounds like another progressive breakthrough and occasion to celebrate.

To get a call up to your club’s first team is every Argentinian boy’s dream. Or so the traditional tango goes.

“Now it’s the girls’ dream … too,” Mara Gómez, who became the first trans footballer to play in a top-flight Argentinian league earlier this week, tells the Guardian. Gómez signed a contract with Villa San Carlos in the recently professionalized women’s Primera División, after years of journeying through the amateur leagues.

It’s all very confusing, and that’s not accidental. This is a man, taking a place on a women’s team. There’s nothing progressive about it.

Gómez’s achievement is not a global first

Trump is no fun any more.

[TERRY] GROSS: Do you have any clues about whether it’s affecting his mental health?

[MAGGIE] HABERMAN: You know, I am of the theory – I know that there’s lots of portraits of him as the mad king and disintegrating and so forth. I think that he is depressed sometimes. I think that he has been very churlish with his staff. But I think that most of what you’re seeing was pretty clear that you were likely to see, or we were likely to see, all along. I do not subscribe to the theory that Donald Trump has changed, particularly. I think he is who he has always been.

GROSS: You say he’s been

Trump is working desperately to kill more people before he’s thrown out of the building. Listen, it’s Krissmiss – you can’t expect a guy to give up the chance to kill people for Krissmiss can you?

Despite public health guidelines warning against indoor gatherings, the White House has pressed ahead with as many as two dozen of its traditional holiday events.

Not “holiday events” you god-hating socialists, Krissmiss events. With the holly, and the lights, and the turkey mac and cheese.

Oh yeah and that other thing, what’s its name. Jared will know, ask Jared.

On Wednesday night, Trump hosted about 200 guests for the annual Hanukah celebration. Photos and videos posted on social media showed most attendees wearing masks