Dominionism at the State Department:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on Friday to the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) at its 2019 world conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Outlining “what it means to be a Christian leader,” while relaying family anecdotes and stories from his West Point education, Pompeo described how he applies his religious faith to government administration.

Titled “Being a Christian Leader” and promoted in his official government capacity on the homepage for the State Department, religious and civil liberties organizations have decried it as a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s intended separation of church and state.

That second paragraph is a syntactical trainwreck. The speech was titled “Being a Christian Leader” … Read the rest

It’s been a day of Dueling Statements. Exciting stuff! Mitch McConnell issued one, so of course Donald Trump had to issue one right back.

First:

New McConnell statement on Trump’s Syria decision: “Abandoning this fight now and withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy and invite the resurgence of ISIS.”

Next:

Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding Turkey’s Actions in Northeast Syria

Genius. Tell Erdoğan to go ahead and invade Syria, and then when he does, impose sanctions. But wait, they’re powerful sanctions, so that will definitely fix everything. Or as Matt Miller puts it:

The guy who opened the barn door is now running

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To celebrate the launch of Trump Towers Istanbul.

…somehow an advocate of both burning everything down and building everything up; an optimist, pessimist, realist and cynic; certainly naive: shat on but fierce, fierce but trying to help; not helping.

I get that. Hell, I have single days when I can whip through those states of mind. I currently think we’re totally fucked, and I would wish that when we go extinct, we take as few other species with us as possible (with perhaps the exception of our industrial agricultural domesticates, though they aren’t to blame for their own existence). At the same time, I would like humans to smarten up … Read the rest

Cis privilege:

A newborn baby girl has been discovered buried alive in northern India, a local police chief has revealed.

Abhinandan Singh told reporters the baby was found by a villager who was burying his own daughter, who had died minutes after birth.

The baby girl, who had been placed inside an earthen pot about 3ft (90cm) below the ground, was rushed to hospital, where she is recovering.

Anoop Kumar Mishra

India’s gender ratio is one of the worst in the world. Women are often discriminated against socially and girls are seen as a financial burden, particularly among poor communities.

Campaigners say a traditional preference for sons has meant millions of female children lost to foeticide and infanticide over

James Kirkup at The Spectator:

Oxford is suffering a crime wave. Police are investigating numerous serious offences over more than six months. Thames Valley Police has issued this sweeping statement about unacceptable acts in the city:

“Thames Valley Police is appealing for witnesses following a number of public offences in Oxford.

Officers are investigating a large number of offensive stickers that have been placed across Oxford city centre containing transphobic comments. It is believed they started appearing in March 2019 within the High Street, Catte Street and Parks Road area.

Investigating officer PC Rebecca Nightingale based at St Aldates police station said: “Behaviour like this is not acceptable and we take incidents of this nature very seriously.

“I am

The mother of Alanna Smith, one of the Connecticut high school runners pushed out by two boys who “identify as” girls, points out how grotesquely unfair it all is:

Men are stronger than women. Boys are faster than girls. An influx of hormones doesn’t undo these realities.

Study after study has reaffirmed this basic fact about what it means to be human. Most recently, Swedish scientists followed 11 biological men whose testosterone was dramatically decreased due to cross-sex hormone treatments over a year.

Even when the men’s testosterone levels matched that of ­biological women, the men’s competitive advantages remained almost fully intact, with muscle size and bone density remaining virtually unchanged in some and decreasing only 5 percent in

Another rage-attack because Meghan Murphy is going to say things in a room rented from the Toronto Public Library:

Hey @torontolibrary, given that you’re a place deeply invested in education and learning, why are you hosting an event by a known TERF? Twitter banned Meghan Murphy for being transphobic. Why give her a platform?

Yes how dare a feminist woman ask questions about what “gender identity” means for women. It’s not as if women have any stake in the subject after all.

But never mind all that, just tell lies.

I would also like to know why my hometown library system is allowing someone who thinks someone like me doesn’t deserve to participate in society to use their facility.

Elizabeth Warren tweets:

For most of America’s history, when our companies did better, our workers did better – and America built a thriving middle class. The Accountable Capitalism Act will help realign our skewed market incentives so companies & workers can once again do well together.

Erm, no. Not for “most” of America’s history at all. For a couple of decades after World War 2, and even then of course black people were almost entirely shut out. What was different about those two decades? Strong unions and high taxes on extreme wealth.

There are a lot of replies saying that.

When unions did better workers did better. This rhetoric can only come from a capitalist.

That was unions Liz.

Disagreement, dissent, protest – how do we do it, how do we do it fairly and reasonably, can we avoid doing it unfairly and unreasonably? Batya Ungar-Sargon writes about being protested at Bard College for being a Jew:

When I was asked to speak at last week’s conference on racism and anti-Semitism at Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center, I think my heart actually skipped a beat.

Arendt, the German-born political philosopher who fled the Nazis in the 1930s and eventually settled in New York, is the thinker who has most deeply influenced me, and racism and anti-Semitism are two topics I think about constantly, the most pressing issues of our time. It was the perfect combination of topic and

It’s Rudy’s turn.

President Donald Trump sought Friday to distance himself from attorney Rudy Giuliani, even casting doubts about whether the former New York mayor is still his lawyer.

Asked whether Giuliani remained his personal attorney, Trump said: “I don’t know.”

“I haven’t spoken to Rudy,” Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House for a political rally in Louisiana. “I spoke to him yesterday, briefly. He’s a very good attorney and he has been my attorney, yeah sure.”

By the end of the day it will be “Rudy who?”

Trump’s remarks followed the arrest late Wednesday of two of Giuliani’s associates, Ukranian-born business partners Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, at Dulles International Airport. The two

Oh good, another one. TV sports director tweets:

Today June Eastwood won the Griz home cross country meet and HBO Sports had a crew there filming

How about that. June is the great big one in the middle then?

Of course.

On Saturday, August 31, Juniper Eastwood will become the first transgender athlete to compete in DI cross country when she runs for the University of Montana in the women’s division at the Clash of the Inland Northwest meet.

Assigned male at birth, Eastwood, now a 22-year-old senior, says she has identified as female since middle school and made the decision to transition during her third year competing on the men’s track team at Montana.

Because that way … Read the rest

Jack Holmes at Esquire on Trump’s new level of horror last night:

Donald Trump, American president took the stage and, among a great many other things, did this. The crowd laughed and cheered.

He may once have told you, in his way, not to believe your eyes and ears. But you can. The President of the United States did indeed just act out some sort of sexual fantasy, in front of thousands and on C-SPAN, between two characters from his extended Deep State Conspiracy Universe…

…This is the president deliberately debasing his office, going lower than ever before and bringing his supporters with him, because he knows they have ventured into the deep and dark together now and they