This is surprising.

Love twitter. Hate Terfs#TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/QA358pbhbx

— Thomas Pringle T.D. (@ThomasPringleTD) December 4, 2020

A T.D. is a Teachta Dála, a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament, so comparable to a Congressional Representative or an MP.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/jX6s6vCiWz

— Thomas Pringle T.D. (@ThomasPringleTD) December 4, 2020

Yes, surprising.… Read the rest

Why we can’t have interesting things.

A group of young men claiming to be Christians have posted a video of themselves tearing down a mysterious monolith that had appeared atop a California mountain and replacing it with a cross.

The monolith had been built near the town of Atascadero and sparked huge interest after the appearance of a similar silvery metal-faced monolith that had been discovered in the deserts of Utah.

The one in Utah was torn down by some random people.

Now the Atascadero monolith has met a similar kind of fate, according to a report in the San Luis Obispo Tribune newspaper.

In a video, which was livestreamed and posted online, the group of young men drive

… Read the rest

Those damn turkeys.

Americans couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts, who begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, data from roadways and airports shows.

The nation’s unwillingness to tamp down on travel offered a warning in advance of Christmas and New Year’s as virus deaths and hospitalizations hit new highs a week after Thanksgiving. U.S. deaths from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 on Thursday, obliterating the single-day record set last spring.

Vehicle travel in early November was as much as 20% lower than a year earlier, but it surged around the holiday and peaked on Thanksgiving

… Read the rest

Let’s see if we can figure out how this works, or if it works.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1334879171437338629

There’s something that I see GC people saying a lot, JKR said it, and they’re right

“If you cannot name your injustice or oppressor, then you can’t fight it”

And then they try to stop people saying transphobe, TERF, even cis. They try and shut down all discussion of transphobia

I don’t know what Montgomerie has against periods at the end of sentences…Maybe it’s a sly joke about the fact that trans women don’t have periods?

Anyway, I think I have figured it out, and it doesn’t work. You have to name the injustice and the oppressor accurately. They both have to be real. … Read the rest

Nailed it.

1/ What turns a child into an adult? Puberty. It follows that if a 10 year old is given puberty blockers & 8 years later, legally an adult, decides to take cross – sex hormones, having missed this crucial stage in human development, is this really the consent of an adult?

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) December 4, 2020

3/ This is why PBs in gender dysphoria are *completely* different to PBs for precocious puberty. A 7 yr old taking PBs to stop an early puberty will be on them for a short time before experiencing full puberty. A GD child on PBs will not & will never complete normal development.

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) December 4, 2020

5/

… Read the rest

Amnesty International and Liberty are joining forces to say that oh yes children should definitely be put on puberty blockers if they’re not loving their experience of puberty.

Amnesty International UK and Liberty are disappointed to see the High Court’s judgment on the use of puberty blockers. We are concerned not only for what this means for the health and well-being of trans young people, but the wider implications this will have on the rights of children and young people of all genders, particularly on consent and bodily autonomy.

Children don’t have “rights to bodily autonomy.” They’re not old enough.

Puberty blockers have been a reversible intervention used for decades to pause precocious puberty. Young trans people have been able

… Read the rest

A November 27 letter from Canadian Women and Sport to the CEO of World Rugby implores him to repeal the “ban” on trans women playing on women’s teams.

Dear Brett, Canadian Women & Sport and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) are writing to express our strong opposition to World Rugby’s ban on Transgender Women Athletes. In doing so, we join 84 academics, Athlete Ally, Egale Canada and others in urging World Rugby to repeal their recent ban preventing transgender women from participating in women’s rugby.

The ban violates the human rights of transgender and gender diverse women, forcing them out of sport and denying them the benefits it brings. The discriminatory ban perpetuates the harmful and marginalizing

… Read the rest

So that’s one bit of good news.

News: @JoeBiden tells me he spoke with Dr. Fauci this afternoon, asked Fauci to stay on in his position at NIAID, and also to serve as a chief medical adviser for him.

Clip coming up on @CNN on @CNNSitRoom

Full interview w Biden/Harris at 9 pm ET

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 3, 2020

… Read the rest

You mean there’s a limit???

AP reports:

The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.

snicker

That is, a spy Trump tried to plant at the Justice Department has been told to gtfo after she tried to bully staffers into helping her spy.

Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the

… Read the rest

I avoided it at first because blegh, but let’s take a look at that letter of former Ellen now Elliot Page’s.

The third paragraph:

My joy is real, but it is also fragile. The truth is, despite feeling profoundly happy right now, and knowing how much privilege I carry, I’m also scared. I’m scared of the invasiveness, the hate, the ‘jokes,’ and of violence. To be clear, I am not trying to dampen a moment that is joyous and one that I celebrate, but I also want to address the full picture. The statistics are staggering. The discrimination towards trans people is rife, insidious, and cruel, resulting in horrific consequences. In 2020 alone, it has been reported that at

… Read the rest

Another shining example of trumpal excellence at Voice of America:

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog, disclosed Wednesday that it had found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” at the parent agency of the Voice of America under the leadership of the CEO appointed by President Trump.

Since taking over the U.S. Agency for Global Media, CEO Michael Pack has turned it upside down, sidelining top executives, firing network chiefs, and deep-sixing requests for visa extensions for foreign staffers. Most notably, Pack had two senior political aides with records of strongly pro-Trump ideological statements investigate journalists for perceived anti-Trump bias and push for sympathetic news coverage of the president during the campaign.

The finding is

… Read the rest

Chase Strangio is distraught over the Tavistock ruling.

Yesterday a court ruled that trans youth under 16 and possibly all trans minors likely cannot consent to gender-affirming care even where they (1) request the care; (2) have the support of their parents or guardians; and (3) their doctor deems it necessary.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) December 2, 2020

It’s interesting and typical and a big part of the problem that CS resorts to hyperbolic emotional language at the outset. How “terrifying and sad and scary” – as if puberty blockers were ventilators and trans young people were being forcibly deprived of them.

This care is deemed medically necessary, safe and effective by every major medical association BUT has been the

… Read the rest

Philip Bump at the Post:

Over the length of a 46-minute video posted to social media Wednesday, President Trump read and riffed on a prepared script lambasting those who had the audacity to suggest that receiving fewer votes than his opponent meant he shouldn’t serve a second consecutive term in office. It was the functional equivalent of one of his beloved campaign rallies, both in the sense that it offered the same meandering range and, quite obviously, the same relief for his frustrations. It was also clearly no small undertaking; the numerous cuts in the final product suggested that what was offered to the country was a subset of what Trump had to say to the camera.

In other … Read the rest

The Military Times is not impressed.

The idea that the U.S. military would oversee a new nationwide presidential election — ordered under martial law by President Donald Trump — is “insane in a year that we didn’t think could get anymore insane,” a defense official tells Military Times.

Yet retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn promoted that exact idea Tuesday evening when he tweeted a press release from an Ohio-based conservative political organization.

https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1333916403389370369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1333916403389370369%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.militarytimes.com%2Fnews%2Fyour-military%2F2020%2F12%2F02%2Fcalls-for-martial-law-and-us-military-oversight-of-new-presidential-elections-draws-criticism%2F

Actually let’s just skip the vote entirely and let the military make Trump Dictator for Life. Why not?… Read the rest

Stand With Mueller writes:

A week after receiving his pardon from “President” Donald Trump, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn promoted a call for the “president” to “temporarily suspend the Constitution” and put the country under martial law.

On Tuesday, weeks after the election Trump lost, Flynn shared a press release from the right-wing We the People Convention imploring Trump to implement martial law. The statement drew a connection to what Abraham Lincoln did with his presidential authority during the Civil War.

“Then, as now, a President with courage and determination was needed to preserve the Union,” the statement says. “Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much

… Read the rest

Oh INteresting.

Ivanka Trump was deposed Tuesday by the DC attorney general's office as part of its lawsuit alleging misuse of inauguration funds, according to a new court filing.

— Kara Scannell (@KaraScannell) December 2, 2020

DC attorney general, so Trump can’t pardon her ass out of there.

Scannell reports for CNN:

Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and adviser, sat for a deposition Tuesday with investigators from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office as part of its lawsuit alleging the misuse of inaugural funds, according to a court filing.

In January, the DC attorney general’s office sued the Trump Organization and Presidential Inaugural Committee alleging they abused more than $1 million raised by the nonprofit by “grossly overpaying”

… Read the rest

Seattle has a celebrity visitor, all the way from the Arctic.

This snowy owl has been wowing residents and birders in Queen Anne.* It is rare for the owls to be seen in this region, and the owls always create a stir in Seattle, where with their striking appearance they can hardly be missed. Their color evokes their usual home in the Arctic. Snowies are the largest of owls, with a wingspan that can reach nearly 5 feet. They also are among the heaviest, weighing in at about 5 pounds. 

I went to see her today. Google actually had the address – apparently she really likes that particular chimney so that’s where she spends the day – which made … Read the rest

To the surprise of no one –

Private Eye has named the Guardian trans activist 'misogynist' who Suzanne Moore complained about (a complaint that wasn't dealt with), because he called her an insecure bigot after she asked him if they could be civil with each other. His name is Owen Jones pic.twitter.com/GRW5pIEaxY

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) December 2, 2020

From Moore’s “Why I had to leave the Guardian” piece last week:

By 2018, the atmosphere was poisonous. A fellow columnist at The Guardian replied to a message I sent about being civil at the Christmas do with: “You’ve prompted the most sickening transphobia, for which you have never apologised, you called islamophobia a myth and you publicly abuse leftwingers.” This person

… Read the rest

Whatever.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has been telling colleagues and allies that he plans to challenge the Electoral College votes when Congress officially certifies Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, as long as a Senate Republican joins him in the long-shot effort, sources tell your Huddle host.

Sure, and I plan to be a billionaire with the power of flight by next Tuesday.

Brooks confirmed his plans in a phone interview, adding that he is still considering objecting to the vote-counting process even if no one joins him — though he acknowledged that would be more of a symbolic protest. Brooks, echoing President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud without providing evidence, argued that the election was “badly

… Read the rest

Glosswitch pointed out one perverse aspect of the trans juggernaut.

https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1333926726817239040

We know that being trans is highly fashionable, and also energetically encouraged from many directions. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t also attract hostility and persecution, but we do know there are plenty of cheerleaders around. I hadn’t quite noticed the paradox that those cheerleaders also insist that being trans (or at least being dysphoric) is agony, but of course they do and of course it is a paradox. Maybe a lot of the putative agony is manufactured, precisely by the biggest cheerleaders for the trans juggernaut. “You’re awesome and stunning and brave and also very likely to kill yourself – welcome aboard!”

I’ve been assuming the shouts about agony … Read the rest