Barr is leaving. The cover story is that he wants to spendmoretimewiththefamily.

NPR has a rundown of his more unsavory actions.

In March 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton called Barr’s handling of the Mueller report “distorted” and “misleading.” Walton, a George W. Bush appointee who was presiding over a lawsuit seeking redacted portions of the Mueller report, said Barr’s actions raised questions about the attorney general’s credibility.

…

Democrats bristled over Barr’s statement that he believed the Trump campaign was “spied on” during the 2016 race, and his decision to appoint a veteran prosecutor, John Durham, to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.

…

He didn’t show up for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee during

… Read the rest

Some people regret the whole thing.

By age 14, Eva became convinced she was a transgender boy. By 16, she had come out to her teachers and classmates.

Her family wasn’t pleased but trans activists and a Toronto therapist had a solution.

She could move into the Covenant House youth shelter, and then freely go on hormones to push ahead with medical transition.

Hell yes. Mess with your body at age 16; what could go wrong?

“They thought it was so important for me to be on testosterone that it was OK if I left home and probably didn’t graduate high school,” recalled Eva, who asked that her last name not be published to preserve her privacy around sensitive

… Read the rest

Trump is tantrumming because a baseball team is going to stop calling itself an insulting name.

The team has been known as the Cleveland “Indians.” Needless to say the team did not restrict its members to Native Americans.

Native American groups and some sections of the team’s fanbase have argued the name is racially insensitive for years. The move, which was first reported by the New York Times and later confirmed by ESPN, is likely to be formally announced in the coming days. Washington’s NFL team decided to stop using a name considered a slur towards Native Americans earlier this year and are now known simply as the Washington Football Team. Cleveland may follow a similar convention while the

… Read the rest

Another one of these. Spotify updated its “new policy around hate content and conduct” in June 2018.

The second part of our policy addressed hate content. Spotify does not permit content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence against people because of their race, religion, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. As we’ve done before, we will remove content that violates that standard. We’re not talking about offensive, explicit, or vulgar content – we’re talking about hate speech.

Again – race, religion, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation are protected from content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence on those grounds, but sex is not. People who have a “gender identity” are protected, but women … Read the rest

There’s the bone density issue.

https://twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1338242568446824448 https://twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1338242572330835968 https://twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1338242578840387584 https://twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1338242583147888641 https://twitter.com/MLaidlawMD/status/1338242584775258112

That seems very undesirable indeed.… Read the rest

This is rather galling:

White House staffers to receive Covid-19 vaccine ahead of general public

The people who have been busily spreading the virus as widely as they can are going to get the vaccine before we do, we who have been following the pandemic rules for the past nine months.

High-ranking White House officials are set to receive some of the first coronavirus vaccines in the United States, according to a White House official and a person familiar.

Those vaccinations, which could begin as soon as this week, would come while the vaccine is in extremely limited supply and only generally available to high-risk health care workers.

…

The President and other White House staff have regularly flouted US

… Read the rest

Northwestern University wipes its hands of Joseph Epstein.

Joseph Epstein has not been a lecturer at Northwestern since 2003.

While we firmly support academic freedom and freedom of expression, we do not agree with Mr. Epstein’s opinion and believe the designation of doctor is well deserved by anyone who has earned a Ph.D., an Ed.D. or an M.D.  

Northwestern is firmly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, and strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views.

Freedom of expression is a value, but there’s also such a thing as editorial discretion. Editors at the WSJ should have rejected that one, or at least required a searching re-write. (Then again maybe a polite argument that Dr. Jill Biden should not use … Read the rest

I daresay non-Doctor Joseph Epstein is happy, because even the BBC is reporting on his rude sexist pugnacious attack on Dr. Jill Biden. Global notoriety!

Joseph Epstein called Jill Biden “kiddo”, comparing her doctorate in education to an honorary degree.

“‘Dr Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

But social media users argued that the article reflected sexist attitudes faced by many women in academia.

Well, yes – calling her “Jill” and then “kiddo” for example.

Let’s be clear about this – it was obviously very deliberate. He knew it would cause outrage, and that must be why he did it, because why the hell else would he … Read the rest

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

… Read the rest

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

… Read the rest

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

… Read the rest

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.

https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1337804907177512962

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

… Read the rest

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

… Read the rest

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