Meeting to discuss mask policy postponed because…

… because dozens of people not wearing masks filled the room.

Well at least they’re sincere.

Utah County Commissioner Tanner Ainge said Wednesday the gathering in Provo, Utah violated current health recommendations and moved to suspend the meeting until a later date. His motion to adjourn was approved with a 2-to-1 vote, with the dissent coming from a commissioner who had organized the meeting.

“This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing,” Ainge said at the meeting. “We are supposed to be physically distancing, wearing masks.”

The audience responded with a loud chorus of boos. 

Because…why? Do they really want to make health and safety a libbrul thing and disease and peril a conservative thing?… Read the rest

You think one pandemic is bad…

I first worried about the possibility of a double pandemic in March. Four months ago, it felt needlessly alarmist to fret about two rare events happening simultaneously. But since then, federal fecklessness and rushed reopenings have wasted the benefits of months of social distancing. About 60,000 new cases of COVID-19 are being confirmed every day, and death rates are rising. My worry from March feels less far-fetched. If America could underperform so badly against one rapidly spreading virus, how would it fare against two?

COVID-19 has made clear what happens when even powerful, wealthy countries are inadequately prepared for rare but ruinous events. Months into the pandemic, international alliances are strained, resources

Bully complains of bullying.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle has stepped down from the Labour frontbench, saying he had been the victim of a “torrent of online hate” because of a “campaign by the rightwing media”.

…

Russell-Moyle did not specify the details of the abuse he had suffered. His resignation came weeks after he apologised to the author JK Rowling for accusing her of “using her own sexual assault as justification for discriminating” against trans people.

And of course by “discriminating against trans people” he means saying such shocking things as:

I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on He says please read it all.

Les sigh. This is just a little of what goes through my head when I see this sort of thread/post/article/etc.

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men.

Non binary people are non binary.

For some, these terms are porous and they live between them.

Gender is not absolute.

What are women? What are men? Are you using the same senses of these words as the people you’re responding to? As law does? As science does? As literature does? As the totality of our species history does? If yes, can you show that? If not, how do you justify that, and what are the potential … Read the rest

1919. pic.twitter.com/v37DFMFmbQ

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 13, 2020

… Read the rest

A man offers to explain it all yet again, for those of us who are just to thick to take it in the first several thousand times.

Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
Non binary people are non binary.
For some, these terms are porous and they live between them.
Gender is not absolute. (2/10)

— Ben Beaumont-Thomas (@ben_bt) July 16, 2020

To the trans people who feel betrayed by the Guardian's coverage of trans issues: there are many people in the company who want to tell your stories, struggles and triumphs, honestly and compassionately. (4/10)

— Ben Beaumont-Thomas (@ben_bt) July 16, 2020

But the stories, struggles and triumphs of women? Not so much. Women are boring. Women … Read the rest

Has the virus just sort of disappeared like a miracle yet?

Not in Florida.

Florida has once again broken its single-day record of coronavirus deaths, as the state struggles to get the virus under control.

Florida health officials announced 156 residents died of coronavirus yesterday, breaking the record of 132 deaths reported on Tuesday morning.

The new figure brings the total number of coronavirus deaths in Florida to 4,677. The state has also confirmed more than 315,000 cases.

The grim news comes as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, refuses to issue a statewide mask mandate, despite the state’s climbing case count.

FREEDOM!

Not in Georgia, now the no-mask-mandate state.

It is officially official. Governor Kemp does not give

Trump is hiding the information.

Previously public data has already disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website after the Trump administration quietly shifted control of the information to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Since the pandemic began, the CDC regularly published data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units across the country. But Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, said that when he tried to collect the data from the CDC on Tuesday, it had disappeared.

Just poof, gone, no warning, no explanation.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that states were told to stop sending hospital information to

There’s a Facebook page called Topsurgery by Miles. It’s what it sounds like. Guy posts before and after photos of breast amputations.

Last year he posted a bit of inspiration:

19th century advice; equally relevant today

Be yourself…by getting your breasts cut off.… Read the rest

Georgia’s damn fool governor Brian Kemp has banned mask mandates.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order Wednesday night, which outright banned cities and counties in the state from issuing mask orders to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

Because freedom! Freedom freedom freedom. Our ancestors came here to get away from mandates to help slow the spread of plague and we must honor that proud tradition.

The move, despite neighboring states like Alabama requiring masks in public, voided mask mandates in 15 local jurisdictions in the Peach State where they had been implemented.

Peaches won’t do you much good once you get the covid.

While outlawing mask mandates, Kemp’s executive order “strongly” encourages all residents and

The fury at ActionAidUK is hot.

If your human rights crusade depends on pretending you don't know what a woman is, or proclaiming that nobody else knows what a woman is without a chromosome test or a peek inside their pants, then your human rights are not human rights, they're men's rights.

— Helen Saxby (@helensaxby11) July 15, 2020

But transwoman Katy Montgomerie told us that no one was denying sex?! @ActionAidUK Denying sex makes you complicit in sexism & constitutes abuse to women/girls. Denying us the reality of our sex keeps us from being able to politically organize around our oppression. https://t.co/e2akqwZrP2

— Amy E. Sousa (@KnownHeretic) July 15, 2020

https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1283463024247033856 https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1283541329759342592

I think we are no longer interested

Trump is sidelining the CDC. During a pandemic. He wants us not to know the facts.

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the

So what does president Pinhead do when people say Princess Ivanka committed an ethics violation by promoting Goya products?

“You want ethics violations? HOLD MY BEER.”… Read the rest

What was that you were saying about contagion?

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) announced on Wednesday he has tested positive for the coronavirus and will self-isolate, Tulsa World reports.

The 47-year-old Stitt is believed to be the first governor in the U.S. to test positive. He attended President Trump’s rally in Tulsa last month, which the county’s health department director said likely contributed to a surge in cases in the region.

Oh, gee. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Stitt led one of the most aggressive reopening plans out of any state and rarely wears a mask in public, according to AP. He has also resisted a statewide mask mandate and said Wednesday after testing positive

Ivanka marketing brand-name beans came along right after Ivanka marketing Get An Exciting New Job! in the midst of a pandemic which has eliminated many jobs.

Today in partnership w the @AdCouncil, @Apple, @IBM & private sector leaders our #PledgetoAmericasWorkers launched a robust ad campaign+website to connect all Americans to NEW pathways & jobs!

Never been a more critical time to explore new opportunities⤵️https://t.co/dRZMdZyON4 pic.twitter.com/AJ88lIlkgy

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 14, 2020

She’s so…er…white.… Read the rest

Sarah Phillimore tells us of someone who wrote to ActionAidUK asking them to use the word “sex” rather than “gender” in their mailings because

These words are being conflated on a regular basis and it is causing issues. Women and girls are being discriminated against and abused on the basis of their sex. Words are important and it needs to be crystal clear who is being subject to the violence so we can help those most in need.

You can write their reply in your sleep.

We agree that words are important. As ActionAid UK is an organisation focused on supporting the most marginalised women and girls in the world, it is important to us that we are clear that

Trump and his hooligans just can’t get it together on what they’re supposed to be saying about Fauci. We hate him? We love him but he has to shut up about this whole pandemic thing? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about? He knows lots but he needs to be more tactful?

Yes, and more.

The White House on Wednesday disavowed an overt attack on the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, from one of President Trump’s senior advisers on trade and China, Peter Navarro.

Navarro wrote an op-ed for USA Today on Tuesday in which he argued that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on” — another salvo in a series

So a bishop and a rabbi walk into a pub issue a joint statement:

It’s a funny kind of “statement” because I can’t find it in any form except that image, only excerpts in a few news items, mostly churchy ones. I just zipped through the bishop’s tweets for the past couple of weeks in case he’d tweeted a link but nope. He seems like a very decent man, full of concern for the downtrodden, but I still have to take issue with some of the claims in this statement.

We have noted with sadness the increasing use of the term ‘transgender’ ideology and other derogatory terms about trans people.

It’s not derogatory to say there is such a thing … Read the rest

I thought it was a photoshop when I looked to see why “Ivanka” is trending – but no, she really did tweet it her own royal self.

If it’s Goya, it has to be good.
Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno. pic.twitter.com/9tjVrfmo9z

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 15, 2020

Remember, kids, she’s an OFFICIAL in the WHITE HOUSE.

She’s also someone who’s never eaten canned beans in her life.

She’s also the loyal daughter and employee of the president who calls Mexicans rapists and bad hombres.

Eyebrows are elevated:

Ivanka Trump is facing backlash after tweeting a photo of herself holding up a can of Goya beans. The tweet from the president’s daughter includes Goya’s slogan, “If it’s

Ross Douthat on cancel culture:

All cultures cancel; the question is for what, how widely and through what means.

There is no human society where you can say or do anything you like and expect to keep your reputation and your job. Reputational cancellation hung over the heads of Edith Wharton’s heroines; professional cancellation shadowed 20th-century figures like Lenny Bruce. Today, almost all critics of cancel culture have some line they draw, some figure — usually a racist or anti-Semite — that they would cancel, too. And social conservatives who criticize cancel culture, especially, have to acknowledge that we’re partly just disagreeing with today’s list of cancellation-worthy sins.

This is what I keep saying. (It surprises me to agree … Read the rest