Laurie Penny. Good grief.

The stupidity takes my breath away. Not LP’s personal stupidity, necessarily, but the stupidity of this whole new Pronoun Doctrine, and weird baroque rationalizations of it like this.

No, she/they is not comparable to tu/vous. Referring to women as “she/her” is not formal or stiff – and it’s not familiar or forward, either. It’s just humdrum ordinary usage in languages that do that.

How did she get there? I suppose by thinking that the closer friends are to her, the more familiar they are with the fact that she has Special Bespoke ideas about her exciting fluid indeterminate interesting GenDer, and so they know they’re expected to create opportunities to refer to her (them) in … Read the rest

Swamp.

Pandemic raging, millions of people out of work, and the president is is going to address it from his country club with a bunch of wealthy members who pay him personally. https://t.co/g8I0IDLt3M

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) August 7, 2020

Before news conf Trump was caught on a hot mic telling people at club…”You’ll get to meet the fake news tonight. You’ll get to see what I have to go through. Who’s there? Oh all my killers are there, wow. So you’ll get to see some of the people that we deal with every day”

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 8, 2020

Trump turned his Bedminster news conference into a rally, bashing the press and drawing applause from his golf

Meanwhile…

The White House is playing "Live and Let Die" before Trump's arrival at a thinly disguised campaign event in Ohio that the state's governor cannot attend because he just came down with Covid-19, the disease that killed over 1,400 Americans yesterday. pic.twitter.com/AGumBfSFb8

— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) August 6, 2020

Tasteful.… Read the rest

The New Zealand Herald reports:

The US Government has warned its citizens to be very cautious about travelling to New Zealand because of our “23 active cases” of Covid-19.

Um. Yes. Be VERY VERY CAREFUL about leaving a country where there have been 4,858,596 cases so far, with 56,105 new cases today, and traveling to one where there are…23. WATCH OUT. MIND HOW YOU GO.MAYBE INJECT SOME BLEACH.… Read the rest

Hahahahachokehahahahahahaha

Jerry Falwell Junior taketh an indefinite leave of absence:

The move comes days after Falwell received criticism for posting a photo to social media that showed him with his pants unzipped alongside a woman who is not his wife.

I saw that earlier this week and was so traumatized I wiped it from my memory.

Between the NRA suit, Falwell’s meltdown and D’Souza’s Thighland hilarity, this week in Trumpland has has a real Layla-montage-from-GoodFellas feel to it.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 7, 2020

Falwell is the son of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the evangelical Christian Liberty University and the conservative Moral Majority movement that rose to prominence in the Reagan era.

Falwell

Also…… Read the rest

We know Trump doesn’t read much. He’s apparently never seen the name “Yosemite” in writing before.

It’s also worth noticing that little spasm of exuberance or whatever it is when he gets to say “Old Faithful” – he perks up and bounces his head back and forth when he says it. He loves stupid nicknames for some reason. “Honest Abe” “Old Faithful” – these are his happy places.

But Yo Semite – yeah. That’s one for the ages.… Read the rest

Speaking of the US’s love affair with long prison sentences – what should the penalty be for stealing hedge clippers?

A black man in Louisiana will continue to serve a life sentence in prison for trying to steal hedge clippers after the state supreme court denied a request to review his sentence.

Fair Wayne Bryant was convicted in 1997 of attempted simple burglary.

So he’s already been locked up for 23 years for trying to steal hedge clippers.

This really is a terrible country in a lot of ways.

The five justices who rejected his appeal – all white men – did not explain the reasoning for their decision, which was first reported by the Lens, a non-profit news site

Life in prison for vandalism?

Some Black Lives Matter protesters in Salt Lake City could face up to life in prison if they are convicted of splashing red paint and smashing windows during a protest.

…

The felony criminal mischief charges are more serious because they carry a gang enhancement. Prosecutors said on Wednesday that was justified because the protesters worked together to cause thousands of dollars in damage, but watchdogs called the use of the 1990s-era law troubling, especially in the context of criminal justice reform and minority communities.

A gang enhancement for violent crimes might make sense; for vandalism it makes no kind of sense.

I looked for photos of the damage – it’s a big mess of … Read the rest

Deutsche Bank has handed over the records.

New York prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s finances previously issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, one of the foremost lenders to the president’s business, as part of their inquiry – and the bank complied, according to the New York Times.

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is seeking eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted the prosecutor and his team to request the records beyond payoffs to women to silence them about alleged affairs with Trump in the past.

Patience. He’ll tell us when Donnie is dragged away screaming.

Lawyers for Vance told a judge in New York on

Dictionary.com’s “definition” of “TERF” is not a definition at all but a misogynist jeremiad crossed with a political rant.

TERF is used to describe cisgender women who self-identify as feminist but who are opposed to including transgender women in spaces they reserve for people who were assigned female at birth.

As if real dictionaries refer to “cisgender” women as opposed to women, and as if they go on to talk about “people who were assigned female at birth” when they mean women.

This is because they believe trans women are men and since men cannot coexist with their feminist ideologies, they exclude them from their beliefs and support.

That’s just gibberish. “since men cannot coexist with their feminist ideologies”?? What … Read the rest

You have got to be kidding.

Beware the TERF. https://t.co/n5eHIUJr7B

— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) August 6, 2020

Updating to add: they changed the image; when I posted it was this.… Read the rest

Oh no, I’m not anything as tedious and old hat as a woman – I’m special.

The musician and poet formerly named Kate Tempest has changed their name to Kae Tempest, and announced they are non-binary.

Which means…what? Nothing, apart from a new nickname.

In the announcement on Instagram, Tempest said they were changing the pronouns they use, from she and her to they and them. Their new name is pronounced like the letter K.

Wow!

They wrote: I’ve been struggling to accept myself as I am for a long time. I have tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be so as not to risk rejection. This hiding from myself has led to all kinds

Jeffrey Toobin on why Mueller’s approach was such a disaster, starting with the failure to make Trump testify:

Trump was the protagonist of this entire affair. He’s also a pathological liar, and he is someone whose perspective, if you want to call it that, was indispensable to resolving what really went on here, what Trump was thinking, what his intent was in a legal sense. So the failure to have his voice in the Mueller report and in Mueller’s determinations about what to do with the information he gathered left, I thought, a massive hole in the investigation…

The written questions were basically a joke. They were essentially written by the lawyers, and lawyers, doing what lawyers do, answered

Trump says Biden is gonna hurt god. What, bash it over the head? Bite its hand? Stamp on its foot?

https://t.co/rUCQAP8ype

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 6, 2020

[wedge hand] Take away ya gunz, destroy ya seccun amennment, [flap hand] no reelijunn, no anything, [hatchet hand] hurt the bible, hurt god – [hesitation; flap hand] he’s agenst goddd, he’s agenst gunnz, he’s against energy, arr kind of energy, ahhh – I don’t think he’s gunna do too well in Ohio.

Brilliant stuff.… Read the rest

It is what it is.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – On Thursday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19. DeWine took a coronavirus test as part of the standard protocol to greet President Donald Trump on the tarmac at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland.

So, no greetings for him. It is what it is.

WH testing protocols just led Ohio Gov. DeWine to learn he has the coronavirus. He was slated to greet Trump on the tarmac in Ohio today.

Note: These quick tests are designed to keep President Trump safe. But, Trump won’t say when these types of tests will be available for all.

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) August 6, 2020

No, such luxuries are … Read the rest

Isabel Wilkerson has a new book out about the caste system in the US. She talked about it on Fresh Air:

TERRY GROSS: When my guest Isabel Wilkerson was writing her book “The Warmth Of Other Suns” about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North looking to escape the lynchings, the cross burnings, the terrorism and the lack of opportunity in the South, she says she realized she wasn’t writing about geography and relocation; she was writing about the American caste system.

Now she’s written a new book called “Caste” that explains why she thinks America can be described as having a caste system and how if we use that expression, it deepens our

Jack Holmes on Trump’s galactic narcissism:

It’s not just that the president knows nothing about anything and cares less. This was an astounding showcase for his malignant narcissism, his inability to process anything except as it directly relates to him. The whole world of observable reality is filtered through how it affects him, and him only. You and everyone you know and love are not relevant. The task of thinking about himself is all-consuming. When Swan pressed him on his decision to hold an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June—the culmination of a prolonged spasm of happy talk on the pandemic—he went immediately to how big the crowd was, and how Fox News got its best

On the Sally Yates hearing:

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates defended a sensitive Justice Department investigation into onetime Trump aide Michael Flynn on Wednesday, telling lawmakers Flynn was essentially “neutering” American sanctions and undercutting the Obama administration by “making nice” with a foreign adversary after Russia’s unprecedented attack on the 2016 election.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Yates said Flynn’s lies to the FBI were “absolutely material to a legitimate investigation” — contradicting the rationale the Justice Department has now offered in seeking to dismiss the case.

Yates, who was a prosecutor for nearly 30 years, said the effort to drop a prosecution against a defendant who twice pleaded guilty was “highly irregular.”

It’s so bizarre having a … Read the rest

There was this tweet.

I wondered if I could find the source, and behold, I could. The first-named author is, of course, Chase Strangio, their star purveyor of fairy tales.

The title is Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked.

Upholding trans athletes’ rights requires rooting out the inaccurate beliefs underlying harmful policies sweeping through state legislatures.

They’re not inaccurate though. The nonsense Strangio talks is inaccurate.

The item in the tweet is “FACT” number 3.

FACT: Trans girls are girls.

MYTH: Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics. 

Girls who are trans are told repeatedly that they are not “real” girls and boys who are trans are told they are not “real”