Bad road

Oct 26th, 2023 10:30 am | By

First, the statement from NYU:

“We’re aware of the photos from the demonstration in Washington Square Park.  These signs are antisemitic, repugnant, and a disgrace. We don’t know the identity of the people pictured, or if they are members of the NYU community, but we take this seriously and will be looking into it. To be clear, antisemitism violates the University’s rules and violators are subject to university conduct proceedings.” 

—NYU Spokesperson John Beckman

Now the photos:

https://twitter.com/Bad_bureaucrat/status/1715812554625171676

This trope that a certain set of people=dirt seems to be a human universal, and a step far down the road that leads to genocide. Dirt, rats, vermin, fleas, maggots – we’ve seen it all before. Turn at a right angle and get off that road.



Should you use the language?

Oct 26th, 2023 10:06 am | By

Is he right?

Before I get to that question – note Fred Wallace thinking anyone wants to get a good look at his thigh, let alone beyond it.

So. Should we use the language?

New question: how can we use the language when we don’t believe in the ideology that mandates the language? It’s like saying we should refer to people as rabbits if they say they are rabbits. It’s like saying we should refer to The Holy Father when we’re not Catholics.

That’s all the more true with this particular ideology because the language basically is the ideology. “Identifying as” is the ideology. The belief that “identifying as” is more real than being is the ideology. The belief that declaration creates reality is the ideology.

We can’t refer to men as “she” without endorsing the ideology. The two aren’t independent of each other. If we call men “she” we are surrendering and submitting to the ideology, when we think the ideology is poison as well as riddled with stupidity.

He’s drawing on the convention that, other things being equal, we call people what they say they are called. That’s the default, that’s normal. But it’s cheating to use the default to justify absurdities. I can’t go around saying my name is Nelson Mandela and you have to call me that. I can do that in a literal sense but it will get me nothing but contempt.

In ordinary circumstances, sure, we call people what they say they are called. In the other kind of circumstances, it depends. Here ends today’s lesson in etiquette.



Merry Intersex Awareness Day

Oct 26th, 2023 8:29 am | By

The European Commission has a Justice and Consumers Department.

Justice and Consumers

This Commission department is responsible for EU policy on justice, consumer rights and gender equality.

Seems like a weird mashup but ok. The point is it’s a real department of the real European Commission. It’s not a hoax. And yet, it tells us…

One, intersex people are either male or female. Two, there’s no such thing as a “right” for people to “be exactly who they are.” There’s the tautology that people are exactly who they are, and there’s the fantasy that people can be whatever they say they are. The tautology is tautological, and the fantasy is childish and absurd.

Also are there any days that aren’t about something to do with Magic Gender?



In Markham Ontario

Oct 26th, 2023 8:00 am | By

I’m not keen on Rebel News as a source but you know how that goes – news outlets that aren’t right-wing don’t touch the subject. (Therefore I must be wrong about it, yeah? No. The left has disappeared up its own backside.)

So I won’t bother with the Rebel News story but here’s the gist:

Why did the swim competition allow this? The wrong sex and the wrong age? It won’t say.



Stormy McStormerson

Oct 25th, 2023 4:55 pm | By

Giant baby throws giant baby fit. World looks on in deep admiration.

Donald Trump stormed out of a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday after a heated day in court that saw the former president called to the witness stand in his $250 million fraud case and fined $10,000 for violating a gag order.

The Secret Service had to go scrambling after him. His lawyers were surprised but stayed seated.

Judge Arthur Engoron handed down the financial penalty after calling Trump to testify under oath in the afternoon about who he was talking about when he told reporters earlier in the day that the person sitting next to the judge was “very partisan.”

Trump said he was referring to Cohen, who he’s previously called a rat, a liar and a felon.

The judge asked Trump if he’d previously referred to his law clerk as “partisan” and Trump said, “maybe” he had referred to her as not fair because she’s “very biased.”

But, Trump insisted, he was referring to Cohen when he told reporters earlier that Engoron is “a very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Engoron’s law clerk sits next to him and has been the subject of complaints from Trump’s team, including earlier Wednesday, when Trump lawyer Alina Habba asked that there be no eye-rolling or whispers from the bench during her questioning of Cohen.

Eye-rolling is it? She’s upset by eye-rolling? What does she think of that thing Trump does with his lips? Or what he does with his hands? Or what he does with his whole face?

Engoron said he found Trump’s testimony “not credible.” He fined Trump for violating the gag order he issued earlier this month after the former president had smeared his law clerk on social media.

A red-faced and angry-looking Trump stormed out of the courtroom about 45 minutes later after the judge denied a motion from his lawyers on a separate legal issue.

Do more of that, Don. Do it until you blow a gasket.



Photo op

Oct 25th, 2023 10:50 am | By

I have to wonder how much time, if any, Leeds City Council Hate Crime Team spends on hate crimes against women. I have to wonder if it even realizes they exist.

[Scrolls]

Ok here’s one:

A bit perfunctory, I think, considering that women and girls are half of all humans. No photo of a council member posing with a woman.

But, hey, at least they had a nice party in a posh room.

Ah. Why? Why focus on LGBT+ hate crimes?

They did retweet something way back in August.

Women seem to be pretty much at the bottom of the list of hate crimes, which is odd if you know anything about the figures.



Just kidding about the guilty plea

Oct 25th, 2023 9:05 am | By

You’d think badmouthing The Enemy after you make a plea deal would be a bad idea.

Sidney Powell may have pleaded guilty to interfering in the 2020 US presidential election, but she still seems to think President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

On her social-media accounts, Powell has continued to push claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that prosecutors in Georgia who brought the criminal case against her were politically motivated. The newsletter published by her dark-money group has shared articles arguing the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, “extorted” her guilty plea.

That looks like taunting a bear, to me – a bear that’s right in front of you with no iron bars in between.

In her hearing ThursdayPowell pleaded guilty to six charges related to her scheme to tamper with election equipment and steal voter data in Coffee County.

None of those developments — nor the ongoing defamation lawsuits from the election-technology companies Dominion and Smartmatic — appear to have changed her tune.

Nyah nyah bear, your breath stinks and your mama eats tourists.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, she has shared posts purporting that the 2020 election was rigged and that law enforcement was politically biased against conservatives.

Over the weekend, Powell shared a post complaining that Trump “can’t even have attorney client privilege.” She also shared a post that said a new survey found many Democrats believed “cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election.”

On Monday, she asked her followers to watch “Police State,” a new movie from the conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, which argues that law enforcement is biased against Trump, who faces four pending criminal cases.

Powell also reposted a video from Tom Fitton, who runs the right-wing watchdog organization Judicial Watch and is said to have advised Trump on his legal issues. In the video, Fitton said Trump was under attack “for daring to dispute the Biden election,” which he lost.

The Substack newsletter for Defending the Republic, Powell’s dark-money group that she used to fund her lawsuits, has made even more inflammatory claims.

Saturday’s newsletter quoted a Federalist article claiming “Willis basically extorted a guilty plea from Powell.” The newsletter bolded a passage arguing she couldn’t get a fair trial with “a jury culled from deep-blue Fulton County” and said the misdemeanors she pleaded guilty to “would be discharged from Powell’s record following probation.”

Powell’s followers were directed to the same Federalist article again in her Monday newsletter. It also cited an Epoch Times article quoting Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow, who said Powell pleaded guilty only because of “pressure” from Willis.

The arguments contra[di]ct Powell’s claims in her Thursday plea hearing, where she agreed her plea was “voluntary” and the charges had “a sufficient factual basis.”

See that’s why I would think people who make a plea deal would refrain from publicly taking it all back hours later. I would think that was quite risky. Saying in court that your plea is voluntary and then immediately telling the world it was coerced looks like admitting you lied in your plea deal.



Who da bigga rat?

Oct 25th, 2023 7:50 am | By

Cohen and Trump together again at last.

Five years after they last met in person, the former president and his self-described fixer were reunited in court on the most anticipated day yet in Donald Trump’s fraud trial.

…over several hours, Mr Cohen provided damaging testimony that repeatedly tied his own actions, and the actions of all the employees at the Trump Organization, directly to Mr Trump. Mr Cohen testified that he answered to Mr Trump, and Mr Trump alone. “Whatever issues he had, whatever created ire for him, he would bring it to me in order to resolve it,” he told the court.

Later, he said Trump personally asked him and Allen Weisselberg, the convicted ex-chief financial officer of the company, to inflate his assets “arbitrarily” by a number he had chosen. They did “whatever Mr Trump told us to,” Mr Cohen said.

In this setting, there was not much Mr Trump could offer in response aside from folded arms and a stony expression. But in the court of public opinion, Mr Trump has sought to paint his former personal counsel as a traitor and a “rat”.

Walking into court on Tuesday, he told reporters that Mr Cohen was a “proven liar” and a “felon”. “You see what his record is, he is not a credible witness,” Mr Trump said. His lawyers picked up that thread during their cross examination.

But of course Trump is a far less credible witness. A large part of the reason for this is his habit of lying constantly about everything. He does it on camera, so that we can all watch him doing it.

Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled the Trump Organization perpetrated fraud. The current trial focuses on other charges of falsification of business records, business fraud, and conspiracy.

Fraud chapters 1-7 billion.



Bizarre delusions in the workplace

Oct 25th, 2023 7:31 am | By

Here’s a puzzler.

I’m not sure what to think about this. We don’t want people being fired just because bosses dislike something about them, but at the same time, we don’t want to work with (much less under) people with bizarre delusions that govern their behavior. What if employees identify as lions and come to work in costume and try to gnaw on colleagues’ arms?

The thing is…”gender identity” isn’t just a quirk, and isn’t just a personal thing in the head – it’s a performance, and a lie, and a sign of narcissism and entitlement. There must be some – many? – trans people who aren’t like that, but the reality is that the ideology itself depends on narcissism and entitlement. It wouldn’t be an ideology otherwise – it wouldn’t be a thing, a movement, an activism, a controversy, a campaign. It’s not about just inward thoughts about the self: it’s been totally and dramatically externalized.

In short a trans employee signals trouble ahead. Being trans is a kind of open invitation to be a quarrelsome greedy entitled shithead to everyone else.

I suppose there’s the same issue with disability as a protected characteristic if it includes mental disorders as pcs? Some mental disorders prevent people from being tolerable colleagues and employees. What to do?

I don’t know. It’s a puzzler. There are problems either way.



Guest post: The body’s rightful tenant

Oct 25th, 2023 6:40 am | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Actors who prioritized politics and ideology.

“…a then-new and experimental model of treating transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents…”

I wish they’d just used “dysphoric” as “transgender” is jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. It seems to concede that “gender identity” and “transness” actually exist, when I don’t think either does at all. Perhaps this was a step too far for the the lawyer writing this, and they don’t want to push too far, too fast, but this statement gives the “actors” in question too much benefit of the doubt and too much legitimacy, particularly since this woman is now detransitioning. It’s like suggesting a person really is possessed by demons, but the exorcism just didn’t take. This strongly suggests the “diagnosis” of trans was premature and uncalled for or, more likely, just plain wrong. If you can’t reliably tell if someone is trans or not with any degree of confidence, you’re setting yourself up for exactly this kind of result. It would be great if these “authorities” could prove the actual existence of a gender identity before making a diagnosis of “transness.”

Let’s take the exorcism analogy a bit farther, and stand it on its head to boot. While the exorcist is trying to drive the disturbed entity out of the sufferer, the practitioner offering “gender affirming care” is trying to make it comfortable. After all, it is primary and foundational, the body’s rightful tennant, not some unwanted intruder. The body itself is to be carved and drugged into submission and obedience, trained to accept the discomfort as a mismatch with its lawful owner, the gender identity, the “treatment” given for the benefit of this being, at the expense of the flesh, blood and bone that it supposedly inhabits.

Rather than the human body in front of them, the doctor’s real client is the gender identity. Everything is done for its benefit. Which must be rather embarrassing when the pesky material body turns around and decides to detransition. What happened to that gender identity that they were so keen to “affirm” when they began “treating” it? Did it suddenly leave? Did it change its mind? Was the gender identity itself “misgendered?” Was it never there to start with? None of these possible answers inspires confidence in “team affirmation’s” ability to correctly discern the presence and nature of the very thing it claims expertise in dealing with.

Yet another failure/tragedy/contadiction in “gender affirming care is how early “treatment” short circuits the possibility of desistance. Genderism’s self-serving medicalization of the distress, confusion and discomfort surrounding the perfectly natural process of puberty transforms a normal bodily process into a disorder or disease. There are real issues that arise as young adults learn what sort of society they’re becoming members of, their own place in it, as well as their newly discovered feelings and sexual desires. The varied and contradictory roles, demands, and expectations that bombard teens can include ones that are limiting, harmful and self destructive, particularly for young women. Genderism tells them they might have been born in the wrong body. It’s much easier (and more lucrative) to “fix” a body that’s wrong than it is to fix a culture that is wrong. Yet, ironically, trans activism spends an enormous amount of time and energy gaslighting, browbeating and bullying entire societies into accepting the idea that men can be or become women, and women can be or become men. If that same effort were put towards fixing the broken, toxic parts of our culture that drive some children to seek comfort in the false hope of the impossible dream of becoming the opposite sex that too many adults are far too eager to sell them, then more of them would grow up in healthier, intact bodies. The distress is real, but the putative cause that genderism posits is probably not. The supposed cure? A nightmare.

If simple human decency is beyond the modern Mengeles, let’s put the fear of lawyers into them. That should do it.

I’ve always thought that once this madness started to cost somebody real money, somone would stop and take a cold, hard look at what is really happening, stripped of blind, sugary, overconfident euphemisms and outright lies.



Nudge

Oct 25th, 2023 2:18 am | By

Dear students: You can get extra credit by doing one of these two political things; be sure to provide a screenshot/photo of you doing one of these two political things; you’re welcome.



Best at all the things

Oct 24th, 2023 5:02 pm | By

At first this is annoying, but then if you enlarge the image it becomes hysterically funny.

(Do I believe that made-up statistic for a second? Of course not.)



It’s IN the BOOK

Oct 24th, 2023 4:49 pm | By

Oh yay, it’s like old times – I’m the lucky recipient, along with the president and the secretary of Atheist Alliance and 184 others, of an email telling me “the Good News of Salvation in Yeshua (Jesus), our Saviour.” The generous donor is one Céline L – funny that she’s coy about her last name when she has this good news to offer.

And how does she know? The bible, duh.

The texts of the prophets in the Bible bear witness to this. In particular, the prophecy of Isaiah 53.
As seen below:

Isaiah 53:
1 Who believed the announcement made to us? 

Etc etc etc; you know the drill.

And there are a whole bunch more – bible extract after bible extract, on and on and on. What more do you need to know?? Look right here: it’s in this book.

That’s me convinced.



“helping” and “treating”

Oct 24th, 2023 4:16 pm | By

A couple of days ago:

All of what Layton wrote:

Before I started my gender transition (ftmtf) I was working with a psychiatrist and social worker who was “helping” me work through cult abuse, and who diagnosed me with Dissociative Identity Disorder. While “treating” me for DID, which included experimental hypnosis sessions and her encouraging me to “let the alters take over and live their own lives,” she also pushed me to proceed with gender transition…despite the fact that I was highly unstable, suicidal, self-harming, etc. Because I was working with her three days a week, and was in such a vulnerable place, I trusted her judgment. She brought my case to a place called Thundermist in Rhode Island. Despite seeing my diagnosis and medicating me for several other mental health issues, they co-signed the idea that gender transition would help my mental health, and they immediately put me on birth control and testosterone. For a long time, I have taken responsibility for the part that I played in this. After all, I was an adult. Then, I think of how many medical professionals saw the extremely vulnerable and dissociated state that I was in, and decided that I was somehow mentally stable enough to process the consequences of these actions….especially when I couldn’t even process my own identity. I feel anger, and it is a rightful anger. I was in need of support and stability…and instead, I have had to come to terms with feeling permanently mutilated. The more I process what happened to me, the more anger I feel towards the current medicalization of children. If I couldn’t consent, how could they? What we are doing is running unethical medical experiments on children. There are no longterm studies on the effects of blockers or hormones in young children.

As an adult, I am high-risk for osteoporosis after 3 years on testosterone. I have symptoms of early menopause, as well as other health complaints. These things matter! Detrans stories matter.



Actors who prioritized politics and ideology

Oct 24th, 2023 3:54 pm | By
Actors who prioritized politics and ideology

Oh willya look at that now.

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1716917419867029519

But but but how can it be malpractice when it’s affirmative??

Let’s read the excerpt:

“…a collection of actors who prioritized politics and ideology over children’s safety, health, and well-being.”

Nailed it. I love lawyers; they’re so good at nailing.

“…their collective failure to treat her properly in the name of a so-called ‘gender-affirmative’ model of care, a then-new and experimental model of treating transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents…”

In the name of a fad, in other words.

Dare we hope that the fad is on its way out?



The mouth on him

Oct 24th, 2023 10:52 am | By

Trump ungagged.

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan agreed to temporarily lift the gag order that had restricted Trump’s public statements about special counsel Jack Smith, his team and witnesses while she considered a motion from Trump’s lawyers to suspend it entirely while they appeal.

So the giant toddler did what a giant toddler would do.

Within 48 hours, Trump issued a new broadsideattacking the prosecutor, Trump’s first since the gag had been imposed. On Sunday, he took to his social network Truth Social to attack Smith in the exact terms that the order had prohibited, calling him “Deranged Jack Smith.”

When he was born the announcement should have been not “It’s a boy” but “It’s a bully.” He’s the bulliest bully most of us have ever witnessed. The need to insult and belittle and cover in filth is the core of his being. He’s a pinhead with a gigantic store of spite and venom.

Trump’s campaign has been aggressively fundraising off the gag order. Though it declined to specify how much it raised, Trump’s campaign sentout more than three dozen pitches that mentioned the phrase in the last month.

Heads they win tails we lose.



Admitted making false statements

Oct 24th, 2023 10:41 am | By

And another one:

Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, making her the third attorney associated with the former president to accept a plea deal in the sweeping criminal racketeering case.

Ellis, who had been facing two charges including violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering act, pleaded guilty in court Tuesday morningto a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.The deal allows her to avoid jail time in exchange for providing evidence that could implicate other defendants and agreeing to testify in any future trials. Ellis worked closely with personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, another defendant in the case who faces 13 charges.

The plea marks the first time a senior Trump aide has been held criminally accountable for and has admitted to making false statements that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by widespread fraud. In a hearing Tuesday morning, Ellis tearfully admitted that she was wrong and misled and that she no longer believes those false claims.

She is the fourth Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the case, which was brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, accused of playing a wide-ranging role in the conspiracy to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia, pleaded guilty Sept. 29 in a cooperation deal with prosecutors. Former pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro each pleaded guilty last week on the eve of their scheduled joint trial in the case.

So what did she do?

Ellis is the second co-defendant with known direct links to Trump to plead guilty in the case. A onetime Fox News regular who was hired in late 2019 as a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, Ellis was part of the post-2020 election legal team, appearing alongside Giuliani and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell at news conferences where she echoed false claims of election fraud.

She worked closely with Giuliani, traveling to battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania where prosecutors say she spoke to lawmakers urging them to reject the popular vote results in their states. The Georgia indictment also pointed to memos she wrote for Trump outlining how Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election results.

Aka steal the election. No small crime. I kind of hope she gets pulled over for tailgating and receives a long stretch in prison for it.

Ellis was later admonished by a Colorado judge for the false statements she made about the 2020 election. As part of that proceeding, Ellis admitted that several statements she said back then were false — stating that she acted “with “a reckless state of mind” and telling the court she had acted with “selfish” motives and that her actions had “undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election.”

So she admitted she lied in order to steal an election to keep that raging fascist in office. Quite an admission.



She fight for all women, she don’t pick n choose

Oct 24th, 2023 9:26 am | By

How dare you write an article that the Daily Mail illustrates with a photo of MEMEMEMEME?!

Proper narc continues to make it all about her.

Let’s think about this. “Feminism is about ALL women. INCLUSIVITY. Or it doesn’t work.”

Well, about, yes, and perhaps for, yes, but we have to be clear about what we mean by it. All women benefit from women’s rights, so in that sense feminism is for and about all women, but in other senses it isn’t. Some women despise feminism and would happily destroy many rights that women currently have. See, for the glaringly obvious example, abortion rights. So yes and no.

More narrowly: yes (and no) all women, but not all women plus men wearing lipstick. Stevenson means the second. That’s stupid. It’s like saying rights for migrants are for ALL migrants, including citizens who Identify As migrants while never stirring from home. It’s like saying workers’ rights are for ALL workers, including bosses and stockholders. It’s like saying BLM is for ALL black people including white people.



Green Party women under even more attack

Oct 24th, 2023 8:49 am | By

Glinner shares a Message from Zoe Hatch to Green Party Members:

Dear  …..,

I received notification today that Joe Hudson-Small, Melanie Earp and John Macefield have voted to suspend me from the party for the email I sent to you on 13th October titled Green Party Women under attack. These named individuals are the ‘on call’ members of GPRC who are supposed to protect the party from the most egregious threats to its reputation. My alleged offence was to send an email talking about how Green Party Women are under attack. The attack on Green Party Women has now been made more clear than ever before, for that at least we perhaps owe them a debt of gratitude. The fervent behaviour of the zealots within the party who are intent on silencing women are the ones bringing the party into disrepute – and it has got to stop. NOW.

As members are aware I am leading the GPW project to compile a dossier of evidence for the EHRC detailing discrimination and detriment towards women on the basis of their Gender Critical (GC) views. Being put on [No Fault Suspension] has the intention of denying me access to any of the benefits of party membership and consequently silencing my voice.

What’s “Green” about trying to remove all women who understand that men are not women from a putative progressive party? What is even “Green” about insisting that men can be women?

Members of GPRC have clearly gone rogue and are acting unlawfully here. Instead of looking after the wellbeing of the party, as they are tasked to do, they are instead directly flouting the legal advice given to them by their own solicitors. This advice clearly defines the offence of victimisation as sanctioning or treating someone badly who has whistleblown regarding discrimination. According to the Equality Act 2010 this is against the law.

It has been clear for some time that GPRC are keen to close down Green Party Women. In April and June this year GPRC held two emergency meetings to try to have the GC members of GPRC expelled from the party. You can read more about that sorry saga here. It was only the heroic efforts of Martha James and others that prevented this from happening. Now Martha has stepped down as GPRC Co-Chair citing her reason that “GPRC is not working as it should”. Personally I think Martha massively understates the corrupt practices she and others have witnessed. Now she has stepped aside it is becoming clearer for all to see.

It seems there is no home for women on the left.



Big

Oct 23rd, 2023 2:15 pm | By

Watch the clip.

https://twitter.com/coachblade/status/1716517303020585322

Dude with pink backpack has shades and a thick scarf obscuring his face. He’s about twice as tall as the women he’s bullying. He stalks around towering over the women and grabbing their signs; he crushes the signs right in their faces, performing the “I’m so furious I’m just on the edge of smashing your face with my fist” ritual. Dude is this “community” in a nutshell: full of hatred and contempt for women who refuse, and big and strong enough to terrorize such women without breaking a sweat.

Updating to add what I forgot to say: he knows which people are women. They’re the one he bullies, because he’s bigger than they are.