How can they do that?

Jon Karl opens This Week by saying the White House blocked Fauci and all federal government medical experts from appearing on the show pic.twitter.com/KOhsgPW2Qh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2020

I don’t understand how they have the authority to do that. Fauci is not an employee of Trump’s, and anyway employers don’t generally have the power to control what employees do in their own time, do they? I don’t understand what this “blocked” means.

Axios elaborates:

The White House refused to allow Anthony Fauci or any of the medical experts on the coronavirus task force to appear on ABC’s “This Week,” host Jon Karl said Sunday.

But why is it a matter of … Read the rest

Good catch.

If the BBC really thought transwomen were women, they would have put the age of Grace McKenzie, not just Sharron Davies (57).https://t.co/TORzLnmjoF

— Billy Bragg in a Billion (@CroneInAMillion) October 11, 2020

How the BBC words it:

Speaking to BBC Sport in August, Grace McKenzie, a trans woman who plays for Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco, said she was worried “that other sporting federations will look at World Rugby and begin to second-guess the existing science that supports trans women’s inclusion in sport, and begin to make policies based out of a place of fear instead of a place of logic and reason”.

“I want to be able to participate fully with

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Like shards of glass stuck in your brain.

I have just read the Croatian writer Daša Drndić’s extraordinary novel-cum-documentary, ‘Trieste’, which is about the destruction of the Italian Jews. A number of Jewish families gave their children to the Catholic Church for safe-keeping. After the defeat of Naziism & the Fascists, the Catholic Church refused to return the children to their families. Monsignor Angelo Roncall, papal nuncio to France and future Pope John XXIII was required to ensure that the Church retained supervision and guardianship over Jewish children who were baptised. Jewish children who had been baptised were on no account to be handed over to Jewish agencies with responsibility for the … Read the rest

Hoo-boy.

One idea Trump considered while still at Walter Reed was wearing a Superman T-shirt under his dress shirt as he left the hospital.@maggieNYT https://t.co/msKt8t66Hy pic.twitter.com/xOyUOkb7oh

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 10, 2020

In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer.

Very adult, very sensible, very even keel, very normal … Read the rest

Cancel everything. Better safe than sorry. Broadway World tells us:

Richmond Triangle Players has released the following statement announcing the cancellation of its production of “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc”, original scheduled to run in-person and streaming through October 10, 2020.

“After weeks of rehearsals and steady preparation to open our production of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, we discovered a great number of views and opinions expressed by and endorsed on the playwright’s personal Facebook page that, after intense investigation and research, we believe to be transphobic.”

So it takes “intense investigation and research” to decide that the playwright’s opinions are transphobic? And even then it’s only their belief? And for that they … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Shame and fear of damnation.

It has taken decades of therapy and hard work to overcome the intense feelings of shame and fear of damnation that she said marked her childhood.

This. So much this. I have been out of Christianity for over 40 years, and I still deal with this nearly every day. It is like shards of glass stuck in your brain. No matter how much you know on an intellectual level that these are fallacious beliefs, that you are not a bad person, you still respond to certain things in the way you have been trained to respond. I have been trying to root out those shards of glass in … Read the rest

This again:

From the article:

More than 500 students and alumni at Oxford have come together to sign an open letter condemning “two professors with a history of transphobia”.

The letter expresses disappointment and distress over the controversial appointment of professors Selina Todd and Senia Paseta to lead a new programme on Women’s Equality and Inequality at the Oxford Martin School. Accusing the Martin School of ‘tacitly sanction(ing)’ the views of Professor Todd and Professor Paseta, the signatories raises concerns about a “hostile and exclusionary environment”.

Blah blah blah blah. This is the new “left” now: the chief enemy is women.

You already know this, but: they are not phobic. Saying that men are not women … Read the rest

Just one giant platform, that’s what.

Meet TIME’s 2020 Next Generation Leaders: “I have faith that everybody can grow.” @MunroeBergdorf on using her blossoming platform to educate the world about racism and transphobia https://t.co/WWV7sfozCl pic.twitter.com/aavB2ttI1D

— TIME (@TIME) October 9, 2020

… Read the rest

The BBC leans heavily on one side of the scale again.

LGBT rights campaigners have criticised World Rugby’s decision to prevent transgender women from competing at the highest levels of the women’s game.

Some have, and others have praised it.

LGBT charity Stonewall says it is “deeply disappointed” with the decision.

“The proposals were based on hypothetical data modelling that has little relevance to the questions of fairness and safety in rugby that the policy review sought to address,” said Stonewall chief executive Nancy Kelley.

Don’t be schewpid. Men are bigger and stronger than women, so letting them play on women’s teams is not fair as well as not safe. Parents don’t call for evidence before telling Joe age 14 … Read the rest

Thus we are reminded why intense religious cults are not benign.

Rebekah Powers was 11 when members of her faith group, the People of Praise, gathered around as she sat on a chair and laid their hands on her to pray. Powers’ sister had shown a gift for speaking in tongues, a defining trait of the followers of the small charismatic Christian community, and Rebekah was expected to do the same.

She couldn’t do it.

“I couldn’t get it, and I stayed there an hour and a half before they gave up and finally said, ‘You just have blockage. You need to just work on your sin and be more open,” she said.

There. That’s why. She was … Read the rest

Trump will be far away from the crowd.

The White House communications director, Alyssa Farah, says that today’s address from Donald Trump will be short and to the point. Although, as many of you will have noticed, brevity is not exactly the president’s strong point.

Neither is getting to the or making a point. There is no point, there’s only a surging mephitic sea of exclamations.

“The President’s at a great distance, he’s gonna be up on the balcony and very briefly address the supporters there,” Farah told reporters at the White House on Saturday.

But “the supporters” will be in a crowd. See the problem there?

If reports that 2,000 people have been invited to watch the president’s

In the blizzard yesterday I missed this one:

Oh did he.

Yes he did.

Wow!!! NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!! https://t.co/hf7zjqZYQ4

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020

The Girl Bot tweet is from 2018 but sure whatever.

Max Boot elaborates:

Trump’s henchman Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is trying to further this mendacious narrative by declassifying selective snippets of intelligence — including suspected Russian disinformation. These “revelations” are then breathlessly hyped by Fox News as if they were Watergate II and robotically repeated by Mike Pence in the 

Lindsey Graham refuses to get a COVID test before he debates Jaime Harrison. Now why would he do that? Because he has it or suspects he has it?

A debate between incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and his Democratic challenger, Jamie Harrison, scheduled for Friday night was cancelled after Harrison demanded both candidates be tested for Covid-19 before the debate and Graham refused, leading the organizers to replace it with separate televised interviews.

Why refuse? Remember when people couldn’t get a test? Why would anyone refuse?

Last week, Graham said he tested negative for the coronavirus after President Donald Trump announced his Covid-19 diagnosis. Three senators, two of whom are on the Judiciary Committee, which Graham chairs, have tested positive

Aw Don wanted to go out and play again but it seems that being hospitalized with the covid just a few days ago means you can’t do that immediately.

President Donald Trump will remain at the White House this weekend, people familiar with the matter said, after he said he wanted to hold rallies in Florida and Pennsylvania despite questions over the stage of his recovery from Covid-19.

Covid shmovid; he wants to play.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump “will be clear to go” on Saturday, when “he wants to talk to the American people.” There are medical tests underway to ensure he doesn’t transmit the virus when he returns to the campaign trail, she

Trump blathered at Rush Limbaugh for a few hours just now, because obviously he has nothing more important to do.

Towards the end of the radio broadcast, Limbaugh remarked that the president’s stamina was proof he had recovered from the coronavirus.

“The president’s status with COVID-19 is pretty solid,” Limbaugh declared, adding: “Not once during the hour and 42 minutes has the president been stumped, has he not known what he’s wanted to say.”

Oh please. Trump always knows what he wants to say, which is it doesn’t matter what, because the point is to prevent others from talking. We’ve watched him do it a million times in those “press briefings” – the way he holds out his pudgy little … Read the rest

There’s standing in solidarity with and then there’s the other thing.

We’re deeply disappointed in World Rugby’s decision to move ahead with proposals to stop most trans women playing in competitions they govern.

We stand in solidarity with those who will feel shut out from the sport they love.https://t.co/Mm2hT5UCxO

— Stonewall (@stonewalluk) October 9, 2020

StonewallUK means they stand in solidarity with men who identify as women who will feel shut out of women’s rugby. They do not mean they stand in solidarity with women who feel shut out of women’s rugby because playing against men will be too dangerous. They also ignore the fact that men who identify as women will not be shut out of men’s rugby. … Read the rest

Trump’s spiraling mania is causing “concern” among people who don’t want a feverish lunatic in control of the codes.

President Donald Trump‘s increasing political desperation is raising concerns about his judgment following his aggressive Covid-19 treatment and as suspicion mounts that the White House is not telling the truth about his health.

It’s not just “suspicion” though – we know for a fact that the White House is refusing to answer some key questions, like when Trump’s last negative test was. We know the White House is not telling the complete truth about Trump’s illness, even if we don’t know for sure that they’ve told lies.

He is pressing his aides to clear him to return to the campaign

Juana Summers at NPR:

President Trump referred to California Sen. Kamala Harris as “this monster” in an interview on Thursday, a continuation of his pattern of attacking Black women with demeaning insults. The president has previously reserved the term “monster” for terrorists, murders and major natural disasters.

…In a telephone interview on Thursday morning on the Fox Business Channel, Trump referred to Harris as “this monster that was onstage with Mike Pence, who destroyed her last night, by the way.”

“I thought that wasn’t even a contest last night. She was terrible. I don’t think you could get worse,” he added. “And totally unlikeable. And she is.”

Uh huh. And what is “unlikeable” code for? Ball-busting bitch, aka woman … Read the rest

Really?

‘trans women aren’t women’

okay well explain this then pic.twitter.com/b3w0QuMuVe

— Cambell ♡ (@Cambellxo) October 6, 2020

Too easy! Give us something more difficult!

Explanation: that’s a male porny idea of “woman.” It’s not ours. … Read the rest

Last night’s news, but I just need to pin it down.

This is late evening on a day when it was all over the news that a group of wacko-right vigilantes were planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer. She’s a Democrat and a woman and she takes the necessary precautions during a lethal pandemic, so naturally the bully boys plan violence against her, and Trump cheers them on.

Governor Whitmer of Michigan has done a terrible job. She locked down her state for everyone, except her husband’s boating activities. The Federal Government provided tremendous help to the Great People of Michigan. My Justice Department and Federal Law Enforcement announced…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020

…I do