All entries by this author

Brazen

Jul 11th, 2019 9:44 am | By

Speaking of McKinnon…

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1149288615949819904

“says the cis white man”…says the white man. Says the white man who loves nothing better than to talk over, chastise, shout at, and bully women. “Rachel” McKinnon who steals medals from female athletes does not get to use his trans status to pretend to be many categories below white men on the Ladder of Privilege.… Read the rest



They might be giants

Jul 11th, 2019 9:30 am | By

This is a must-watch from the WPUK Fair Play event yesterday.

She’s the one on McKinnon’s left.

Read the rest



Send him a letter

Jul 11th, 2019 9:00 am | By

One law for the rich, and another for everyone else.

Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein never once checked in with city cops in the eight-plus years since a Manhattan judge ordered him to do so every 90 days — and the NYPD says it’s fine with that.

After being labeled a worst-of-the-worst, Level 3 sex offender in 2011, Epstein should have reported in person to verify his address 34 times before he was arrested Saturday on federal child sex-trafficking charges.

But hey. He’s rich. He’s white. He’s a man. Capeesh?

Violating requirements of the state’s 1996 Sex Offender Registration Act — including checking in with law enforcement — is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison

Read the rest


So attenuated and abstract

Jul 11th, 2019 8:28 am | By

Emoluments? What emoluments?? I don’t see any emoluments; do you see any emoluments???

A constitutional challenge to President Trump’s continued ownership of his businesses has been ordered dismissed by a federal appeals court.

The case was brought by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, arguing that Trump had violated the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution by accepting money from state and foreign governments via his Washington hotel and business empire.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled unanimously that the attorneys general did not have the standing to bring the lawsuit and instructed a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit.

Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the opinion:

Read the rest


No more than one’s own fantasy about oneself

Jul 10th, 2019 4:15 pm | By

Fired for refusing to call a man “madam”? Sounds very Monty Python, doesn’t it.

Dr David Mackereth, 56, claims he was sacked as a disability benefits assessor by the Department of Work and Pensions over his religious beliefs.

The father-of-four alleges he was asked in a conversation with a line manager: “If you have a man six foot tall with a beard who says he wants to be addressed as ‘she’ and ‘Mrs’, would you do that?”

Well you can’t address people as “she,” can you. That’s a minor point, I know, but it gets so annoying seeing this confusion so often.

A hearing in Birmingham was told how Dr Mackereth believes transgenderism is a “delusional belief” and an ideology

Read the rest


Fair play to them

Jul 10th, 2019 3:04 pm | By

Women’s Party UK held a public meeting this evening on keeping women’s sport women-only. (I assume it’s over now, at nearly 11 their time.) It was at a large venue and the place was packed.

Read the rest


Guest post: Strength has been something to aim for

Jul 10th, 2019 2:37 pm | By

Originally a comment by Steamshovelmama on Go, and sin no more.

Labels… *sigh*. This is a conversation I have had many times with my 22 year old daughter, who is rather more woke than me. Labels are important, especially to young people who feel lost and excluded because there is no one else like them in their culture and/or peer group. To that young person, finding that there is an actual name for what they are is a huge validation – and young, unhappy, confused, isolated people do need that validation.

The problem is, as always, reification. The label is usually an artificial term, placing boundaries round something that is really a point on a continuum. Unfortunately, people are … Read the rest



How do we argue for human rights?

Jul 10th, 2019 11:36 am | By

Ron Lindsay on Pompeo’s “natural law” commission:

“That some persons are free and others slaves by nature … and that for these slavery is both advantageous and just, is evident.” So said Aristotle, one of the first advocates of the “natural law” approach to ethics. (See his Politics, Book I, ch. 5.)

Thus we see one of the problems. Different people have different ideas of what “natural law” is, and the ideas may have more to to with the convenience of the haver than the well-being of everyone else. Trump thinks it’s natural law that everyone should flatter him without cease.

Natural law theory has had a number of different proponents throughout history, and the exact contours of

Read the rest


Acosta wants MORE child sex trafficking

Jul 10th, 2019 10:41 am | By

Oh is he indeed.

Alexander Acosta, the US labor secretary under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, after the billionaire was investigated for having run a child sex trafficking ring, is proposing 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking.

That’s definitely a good look.

The bureau’s budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.

ILAB has the task of countering human trafficking, child labor and forced labor across the US and around the world.

Read the rest


On the orders of the president

Jul 10th, 2019 10:00 am | By

It’s as if all of life has become a war between The Narcissists and everyone else. The Narcissists have definitely won this round, but it might not serve their purposes in the larger war.

(Is that a built-in shield against Narcissists? The more they win the more they disgust everyone else, so their power is always fragile and temporary? It’s a pretty thought, at least.)

The resignation of Sir Kim Darroch followed the failure of the likely next prime minister, Boris Johnson, to say he would support him staying in post – despite being given repeated chances to do so during his TV debate with Jeremy Hunt. As the current Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan put it, by

Read the rest


This humiliating, servile, sycophantic indulgence of the American president’s ego

Jul 10th, 2019 9:24 am | By

Still on the Darroch issue: Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, has issued a statement:

The fact that Sir Kim has been bullied out of his job, because of Donald Trump’s tantrums and Boris Johnson’s pathetic lick-spittle response, is something that shames our country. It makes a laughing-stock out of our government, and tells every one of Britain’s brilliant representatives abroad that the next Tory prime minister will not stand up for them, even when they are simply telling the truth and doing their job.

Sir Kim Darroch should hold his head high for the wonderful job he has done representing our country, while Boris Johnson should go and hang his head in shame. He claims to regard

Read the rest


Untenable

Jul 10th, 2019 9:17 am | By

Chalk up another win for President Monster:

Sir Kim Darroch, the UK ambassador to Washington who has been at the centre of a diplomatic row over leaked cables criticising Donald Trump, has resigned.

The Guardian understands he concluded his position was untenable having watched the Conservative leadership debate on Tuesday, in which the frontrunner, Boris Johnson, stopped short of backing him over the leak.

So President Hulk gets rewarded for yet another bout of trashy vulgar namecalling and the US slides a few miles farther down the slope of degradation.

Asked whether in an episode such as this it would be expected that the entire establishment would support Darrock, [the head of the diplomatic service] said: “Yes”, adding

Read the rest


Go, and sin no more

Jul 9th, 2019 5:50 pm | By

Another shunning achieved! Break out the parsnip champagne!

The University of British Columbia is barred from marching in the Vancouver Pride Parade after allowing a controversial figure to speak on campus earlier this summer.

Andrea Arnot, executive director of the Vancouver Pride Society, says all entries to the parade have to meet specific requirements — judged on a point system— to be allowed to participate.

“We reject applications every year,” Arnot said.

Any guesses on what the “controversial” refers to?

UBC fell below the required number of points by allowing Jenn Smith, who has been labelled by critics as transphobic, to host an event on campus in June that criticizes B.C.’s sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum (SOGI).

Someone criticized … Read the rest



That there is trash

Jul 9th, 2019 5:28 pm | By

Trump’s trashy vulgarity of course sets the tone for others in his “administration.”

“Major Meow Mashup” hur hur geddit they’re all women it’s a catfight meow hur hur hur.

I’m so tired of the trashy vulgarity.

Read the rest



“Access to sex workers”

Jul 9th, 2019 4:38 pm | By

You have got to be kidding.

A dangerous sex offender has been granted freedom from a West Australian prison and will be able to visit sex workers in a bid to reduce his risk of reoffending.

Edward William Latimer, 61, has a criminal record dating back to his teenage years and has spent most of his adult life in prison for offences including sexual assaults and wilful exposure.

So let’s make women his safety valve. What could go wrong?

WA supreme court justice Anthony Derrick said in his decision handed down on Tuesday that while Latimer remained a serious danger to the community, the risk could be managed in the community.

“There are adequate safeguards contained in the supervision

Read the rest


Also, James Madison said Trump would make an excellent host for The Apprentice

Jul 9th, 2019 3:58 pm | By

Yesterday:

CNN:

Trump passed along a tweet from an obscure account that called itself “The Reagan Battalion,” which appeared to be impersonating a well-known conservative account of the same name. The copycat account had fewer than 300 followers at the time Trump promoted it.

Its tweet read: “Dear weak Conservatives, never forget that you are no match for ‘we the people,’ and our president.” Attached to the tweet was a photo of Trump and Reagan shaking hands — with a supposed Reagan quote superimposed on top.

“For the life of me, and I’ll never know how to explain it,

Read the rest


A range of religious backgrounds

Jul 9th, 2019 11:43 am | By

Ominous:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday unveiled a new Commission on Unalienable Rights, a panel he said is aimed at providing him with “an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy.”

The panel will be headed up by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican under George W. Bush. Glendon is also a social conservative who has been a prominent anti-abortion voice, which could lend credence to the concerns among human rights activists that the commission is a ploy to undercut LGBTQ and women’s rights under the guise of religious liberty.

Ya think?

“Every once in a while we need to step back, and reflect seriously

Read the rest


10 or 15, or more like 20 or 70

Jul 9th, 2019 11:05 am | By

Also, Trump hardly knows Jeffrey Epstein, hardly at all, hasn’t seen him in centuries, barely remembers him.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday that President Donald Trump told her he has not had contact with Jeffrey Epstein in “over a decade” and that the president finds the recent charges of sex trafficking against the billionaire financier “completely unconscionable.”

“I talked to the president this morning. He hasn’t talked or had contact with Epstein in years and years and years — and over a decade at least, he said,” Conway told reporters.

Years x 3 sounds like more than a mere decade to me, but you do you.

“He doesn’t think he’s talked to him or seen him in

Read the rest


Dignity in all things

Jul 9th, 2019 10:49 am | By

Remember, kids, the thing to do about criticism is to stage a huge tantrum and exact whatever kind of revenge you can come up with. That always works.

The U.K. is trying to prevent a row with Donald Trump from escalating after the president froze out the British ambassador in Washington over leaked diplomatic memos.

The row follows the publication of diplomatic cables in the Mail on Sunday newspaper in which the ambassador called the U.S. president “inept” and “incompetent.” That prompted the White House to cancel an invitation on Monday for Darroch to attend a dinner with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the emir of Qatar, according to a U.S. official.

Yes!! Brilliant!!! So dignified and mature. Much … Read the rest



Triumph

Jul 9th, 2019 10:15 am | By

The vulgar spectacle continues to unfurl.

The UK’s “wacky” ambassador to the US is “a very stupid guy” Donald Trump has said, amid a row over leaked emails.

This came after Downing Street reaffirmed its “full support” for Sir Kim Darroch.

It’s like having Triumph the Insult Comic Dog as president.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Mr Trump’s comments are “disrespectful and wrong to our Prime Minister and my country.”

In a tweet to Mr Trump, the Tory leadership hopeful added: “Ambassadors are appointed by the UK government and if I become PM our Ambassador stays.”

A spokesman for Theresa May said that Sir Kim is “a dutiful, respected government official” and confirmed there are no plans for Mrs

Read the rest