Verdict is in. No on rape, yes on sexual abuse. $2 million in damages.

Correction: 5 million. FIVE.

Safe, joyful, inclusive, all the good things.

Yes isn’t it sickening how feminist women point out why women need feminism. Also: isn’t it impressive how the trans movement never ever ever “weaponises victimhood.” Also what does she mean by “safe, joyful protest”? The “protest” was so safe and joyful that the film was canceled, so the women who went there to see it did not get to see it. Much safe, very joyful.

Dr Baines describes herself as

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in Higher Education | Co-chair @UoEStaffPride | All opinions my own | End the hostile environment

Equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education except for women. Women can submit or get out; those are the choices. End the hostile environment except for women – make the environment for women as hostile and threatening as possible.

I’m so sick of these quislings.

It is, indeed, disgusting.

Sonia Sodha is unimpressed by Stonewall’s tantrum.

Dennis Kavanagh same.

Stonewall is in a lather.

The UK’s national human rights institution, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has completely failed to engage with significant recommendations given to it for improvement to their governance and conduct, and is instead doubling down on its attempts to roll back trans rights and to seek trans people’s exclusion from public life, a coalition of leading LGBTQ+ charities has warned.

But of course the all too familiar question immediately arises – how are you defining trans rights?

Being Stonewall, they are of course defining trans rights as doing whatever they want all the time, which unfortunately clashes with the rights of other people, in particular women, lesbians, gay men, children, teenagers…quite a lot of kinds of people, really.

And of course the EHRC is not seeking the exclusion of trans people from public life.

…the EHRC has escalated attempts to undermine the long-established rights of trans people in the UK, most notably in April when it sent a letter to the Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch on the merits of redefining the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to make it clear that trans people would no longer be protected. 

Again: how are we using “protected”?

Trans people can have rights (aka can be protected by the Equality Act) even without being “validated” as the sex they’re not in all circumstances. It’s not a “right” to falsify one’s sex on all occasions for all purposes. That can’t be a right, for the simple and sad reason that one sex is potentially a threat to the other. The two sexes aren’t on an equal footing when it comes to physical safety, bodily integrity, freedom – little items like that. Men can impregnate women against their will; that fact all by itself is enough to make it clear that no, men cannot be treated as women at all times by all people no matter what.

Such a change, if it [were] implemented by the UK Government on EHRC’s recommendation, would make it impossible for trans people to live their day to day lives safely and with dignity…

Note Stonewall’s indifference to women’s ability to live their day to day lives safely and with dignity.

Nancy Kelley, Chief Executive of Stonewall, (she/her) said: ‘The EHRC’s recommendations over the past year are extraordinary, in that they are designed to promote the exclusion of trans people, in particular trans women, from everyday public spaces.’

No, they’re not. That’s just the usual Stonewall lie. They’re designed to prevent the invasion of women’s everyday public spaces by men who are or claim to be trans women.

Women have rights too.

Dahlia Lithwick reminds us where we are:

Over the past few weeks we have learned that Justice Clarence Thomas took multiple luxury vacations, valued in millions of dollars, over many years, paid for by Harlan Crow, a billionaire GOP donor who has business before the court. We know Crow had also contributed the $500,000 seed money that became Ginni Thomas’ Liberty Central, which paid her salary. We also know that Harlan Crow purchased the home in which Justice Thomas’ mother currently resides, rent free. And late last week, we learned that Crow paid years’ worth of private school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew, Mark Martin, of whom Thomas had legal custody and whom Thomas was, as he put it, “raising as a son.” Justice Thomas knew such gifts needed to be disclosed because he did so with another tuition payment gifted to Martin in 2002. But he did not report the tuition Crow paid.

In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned his seat at the Supreme Court for accepting $15,000 in exchange for a series of paid lectures at American University. Part of the Fortas scandal also involved news of him accepting a stipend for doing legal work for a very rich friend (money he had actually returned when the benefactor was indicted and before the outcry).

None of Fortas’ colleagues defended him for this. No one blamed the press or even the Nixon administration (which very much orchestrated the ouster). It was widely understood that Fortas had done something that undermined the public legitimacy and independence of the court and that he had to go.

Over the past few weeks we have learned that Justice Clarence Thomas took multiple luxury vacations, valued in millions of dollars , over many years, paid for by Harlan Crow, a billionaire GOP donor who has business before the court. We know Crow had also contributed the $500,000 seed money that became Ginni Thomas’ Liberty Central, which paid her salary. We also know that Harlan Crow purchased the home in which Justice Thomas’ mother currently resides, rent free. And late last week, we learned that Crow paid years’ worth of private school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew, Mark Martin, of whom Thomas had legal custody and whom Thomas was, as he put it, “raising as a son.” Justice Thomas knew such gifts needed to be disclosed because he did so with another tuition payment gifted to Martin in 2002. But he did not report the tuition Crow paid.

Last Thursday, we also learned that in January in 2012, Leonard Leo arranged to have Ginni Thomas paid $25,000 for consulting work through Kellyanne Conway’s polling company. The funds came from the Judicial Education Project, a dark money group that listed its address as a UPS Store in Georgetown. Leo’s instruction to Conway asked her to funnel the cash to Ginni, and took care to note that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.” A few short months later, the Judicial Education Project filed an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, arguing for the dismantlement of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County was a 5-4 decision, with Justice Thomas in the majority.

The insult-comic response to all these revelations has been some sighing version of “I sure wish I had friends like Harlan Crow,” and “I sure wish I had friends like Leonard Leo.” The problem is: Most of the justices, and certainly most politicians and judges and people of generalized fanciness already do have friends like Harlan Crow. American governance is so inextricably bound up with capitalism and cronyism that the shocker would in fact be if justices didn’t have a few friends who were the sort of wealthy political operatives who could buy them a pony or two on demand.

Emphasis added. It’s true, and it’s maddening.

[T]he way power currently works in this country is that you get to buy it. If you don’t see the straight line between Citizens United, Leonard Leo, Shelby County, and the concerted effort to take power from regular you and give it to Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo, you are not seeing the plan clearly.

There’s also something specifically infuriating about the way defenders of the deep spiritual kinship between Harlan Crow and Clarence and Ginni Thomas root their argument in the fact that paying for an at-risk youth’s private school tuition is a noble act—“charity” even. The problem with that is: This is a conservative legal movement that is racing to subvert voting, public education, the administrative state, and (at present) the possibility of student loan forgiveness. So Harlan Crow’s replacement of an entire New Deal safety net with an ad hoc charitable benefits system administered by himself and directed only at the offspring of personal friends is specifically infuriating. 

See, the New Deal safety net was (at least in theory) for everyone who needed a safety net. Harlan Crow’s ad hoc charity, not so much.

What a lovely fellow. Imagine not wanting to be part of a political trend he approves of.

Joanna Cherry’s statement on The Stand Comedy Club:

“In January, I accepted an invitation from The Stand to speak at an event in The Fringe this coming August. To my disappointment, and after initially backing the event, the Board of The Stand cancelled the event, citing concerns expressed by staff who were unwilling to work at it. The event has been running for four years and has a wide and diverse range of speakers, including from various political backgrounds.

I immediately required to defend my reputation. I said last week on BBC Radio Scotland:

“I’m being cancelled and no-platformed because I’m a lesbian, who holds gender-critical views that somebody’s sex is immutable.

“I’ve made those views clear over a number of years. I have never said that trans people should not have equal rights. [emphasis added]

“Because a small number of people don’t like my feminist and lesbian activism, I’m being prevented from talking about these things and others in my home city where I’m an elected politician.

“I think it says something’s gone very wrong in Scotland’s civic space.

“Small groups of activists are now dictating who can speak and what can be discussed.”

It strikes me afresh how very religiony it is. How very Inquisitiony (minus the torture and executions, to be fair). How very “you must believe what we tell you to believe, no matter how magical and impossible to believe you find it.” But we can’t. Even if you tell us to we can’t. We just can’t. It isn’t believable. We don’t want to harm or punish trans people, but we can’t believe the claims. I can’t believe Jesus was his own daddy and rose from the dead, and I can’t believe that men wearing lipstick are women.

She’s taking them to court, by the way.

“I am prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to vindicate my right not to be misrepresented and not to be discriminated against. This is not about money. My primary goal is to have the actions of the Stand acknowledged as unlawful and to ensure the event proceeds. I have asked The Stand to apologise to me too. If they don’t agree with my reasonable requests, I intend to ask the court to decide on the issue. I hope that my actions in defending myself will give courage to everyone particularly women who wish to express views on legitimate issues of public interest. That, after all, is the very job of a politician and one of the reasons I entered politics in the first place.”

It’s really not asking much. “Don’t abuse and punish women for being unable to believe that men are women.”

What a Maroon pointed out the Washington Post’s not at all manipulative poll on attitudes to the holy sacred anointed extremely special set of people known as “trans.”

Headline:

Most Americans support anti-trans policies favored by GOP, poll shows

But of course the policies aren’t “anti-trans.”

Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.

But “restrictions” can mean a lot of different things. Restrictions on unhealthy additives in food are a good thing. Restrictions on lead-based paint are a good thing. Restrictions on a rush to trans a child are also a good thing. As for sports participation, the only restriction is keeping boys out of girls’ sports, which is as it has been all along only fair.

Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.

Are we talking gender here, or sex? It’s sex that is determined in utero, while gender can mean just the social rules and nudges that sex gets landed with.

And some Americans have become more conservative on these questions as Republicans have seized the issue and worked to promote new restrictions. 

Who says the rejection of gender magic is “more conservative” though? I think the conservative view is the one that says “that boy giggles and wears skirts so he is a girl.”

The Post-KFF poll was conducted in November and December, before state lawmakers introduced more than 400 anti-trans bills this year, up from about 150 bills in 2022 according to a Post analysis of ACLU data.

Oh lord. You don’t want to go to the ACLU for your information on this subject. They’re fully captured, and stark raving mad.

More than 6 in 10 adults in the Post-KFF poll said trans girls and women should not be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, including professional, college, high school and youth levels.

That’s depressing. Should be 10 in 10 adults. Boys and men have no business in girls’ and women’s sports.

Peaceful and joyful.

Except when we don’t.

Nah, it’s trying to silence and punish people who don’t believe in magic gender that’s unacceptable.

https://twitter.com/cabaretagainst/status/1655304355543646210

They were simply asking! That’s all! It’s none of their damn business but that’s all they were doing so everybody else is disgusting so nyah.

https://twitter.com/cabaretagainst/status/1655304361071837184

You’d think “gender critical” meant “violent sadism” or similar, instead of just meaning awareness that people can’t change sex.

Choss didn’t wait to appoint a new Head of the Royal Medical Household. Edzard Ernst has the details.

Last September, THE GUARDIAN published an article about the HEAD OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL HOUSEHOLD. I did not know much about this position, so I informed myself:

The royal household has its own team of medics, who are on call 24 hours a day. They are led by Prof Sir Huw Thomas (a consultant at King Edward VII’s hospital [the private hospital in Marylebone often used by members of the royal family, including the late Prince Philip] and St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, and professor of gastrointestinal genetics at Imperial College London), head of the medical household and physician to the Queen – a title dating back to 1557. Thomas has been part of the team of royal physicians for 16 years and became the Queen’s personal physician in 2014.

That is, they were led by Huw Thomas as of last September. Now, not. At some point in 2022, no doubt on or after the day Choss magically became king, he was replaced by Michael Dixon.

Yes, Michael Dixon! I am sure this will be of interest. Michael Dixon used to be a friend and an occasional collaborator of mine. He has featured prominently in my memoir as well as in my biography of Charles. In addition, he has been the subject of numerous blog posts, e.g.:

• Today, integrative medicine is about to make history, says Dr. Michael Dixon
• My (most forgettable) paper with Dr Michael Dixon
• Boosting immunity against coronavirus? Dr Michael Dixon’s infinite wisdom on the pandemic
• Dr Michael Dixon seems to support homeopathy as a treatment for cancer
• Should homeopathy be blacklisted in general practice? Dr Michael Dixon’s profoundly misleading comments
• Johrei healing and the amazing Dr Dixon (presidential candidate for the RCGP)
• Dr Dixon’s safe herbal medicine
• Remember the ‘Foundation for Integrated Health’? Here is a good summary of its infamous history
• Prince Charles becomes patron of the ‘College of Medicine and Integrated Health’
• Uncharitable charities? The example of ‘YES TO LIFE’
• A treasure trove of fallacies, falsehoods and deceptions

I am sure that many of my readers would like to join me in wishing both Michael and Charles all the best in their new roles.

Let’s follow a link. How about Prince Charles becomes patron of the ‘College of Medicine and Integrated Health’ from December 2019.

If you had thought that HRH Prince Charles, soon to be King, would calm down regarding his royal bee under his alternative bonnet, you evidently were mistaken. In June 2019, he became the patron of the ‘Faculty of Homeopathy‘ the professional organisation of UK doctor homeopaths. And a few days ago, it has been announced that he now has also become the patron of the ‘College of Medicine and Integrated Health’ (CMIH). The College chair, Michael Dixon, was quoted stating: ‘This is a great honour and will support us as an organisation committed to taking medicine beyond drugs and procedures. This generous royal endorsement will enable us to be ever more ambitious in our mission to achieve a more compassionate and sustainable health service.”

 find it hard to be surprised by Charles’ latest move. After all, the CHIM is the direct successor of Charles’ ‘Foundation for Integrated Health‘ (FIH). When this bizarre organisation had to close in 2010 amid claims of fraud, money laundering and misuse of charity status (its chief executive later went to prison!), Dixon quickly organised the creation of the CMIH. Even though he was clearly involved, Charles was probably wise to keep his distance after the scandal. But now, almost a decade later, the dust has settled and he feels he can again patronise (= become a patron).

Among those arrested for being a potential nuisance to Charles Windsor were women’s safety volunteers.

Westminster City Council officials said they are “deeply concerned” by reports women’s safety volunteers were arrested hours before the Coronation.

The Met said at about 02:00 BST on Saturday three people were arrested in Soho on suspicion of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. Among items seized were a number of rape alarms, the force said. The Met said it “received intelligence” people “were planning to use rape alarms to disrupt the procession”.

And which is more important? Women’s safety? Or the procession?

They what???

Met Police officers have arrested anti-monarchy protesters in central London ahead of the King’s Coronation. The leader of anti-monarchy group Republic has been arrested and the force said it had detained multiple people in the City of Westminster.

They are held on suspicion of breaching the peace, conspiracy to cause public nuisance and possessing articles to cause criminal damage, the force said. Republic said hundreds of their placards had also been seized.

“A significant police operation is under way in central London,” the force said on Twitter. Footage on social media showed officers using their powers under the new Public Order Act.

Chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic, Graham Smith, was among those apprehended in St Martin’s Lane near Trafalgar Square. Pictures showed protesters in yellow “Not My King” T-shirts, including Mr Smith, having their details taken. In one video an officer said: “I’m not going to get into a conversation about that, they are under arrest, end of.”

Arrested for being anti-monarchist in public. It’s breathtaking.

The Met confirmed that four people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance on St Martin’s Lane and that lock-on devices were seized.

What about the coronation itself? That’s a massive public nuisance, but we don’t see “The Met” arresting people on suspicion of planning to clog up central London for hours.

I honestly didn’t know it was illegal to be anti-monarchy in the UK.

Footage from the scene also showed about 15 protesters being handcuffed and taken away by a heavy police presence.

On Wednesday the Met said that it would have an “extremely low threshold” for protests during the coronation celebrations, and that demonstrators could expect “swift action”.

Why? What right do they have to do that? How are demonstrations illegal and deserving of “swift action” in the form of aggressive arrest? The Beeb shows a photo of a guy being carried off like a sack of potatoes.

The police carried out their threat to arrest people for protesting.

Dozens of people have been arrested during the King’s Coronation, including the leader of a prominent anti-monarchy group. London’s Metropolitan Police said 52 arrests were made for a range of reasons, and all remain in custody.

The arrest of anti-monarchy protesters earlier in the day has been labelled “alarming” by human rights groups. The Met said it “understands” public concern, but that officers had acted proportionally under the law.

“Protest is lawful and it can be disruptive,” Commander Karen Findlay, leading the day’s operation, said – pointing to numerous protests that had been policed without any arrests. Officers, she said, have a duty to intervene “when protest becomes criminal and may cause serious disruption. This depends on the context. The Coronation is a once in a generation event and that is a key consideration in our assessment.”

Well it shouldn’t be. The coronation is a public display of monarchism, and the police have no business imposing monarchism on people who object to it. Police enforcing monarchism underlines what a bad idea monarchism is.

Police said the 52 arrests were made for offences including affray, public order offences, breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. A breakdown provided later revealed that 32 – or about 60% – were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.

The coronation is a public nuisance! Arrest the people who planned that!

Ugh, it’s so toadying and belly-crawling and repellent.

Women write to the Times to take issue with Martin Samuel’s clueless “be inclusive of cheating men in women’s sports” column.

I am a grassroots runner who has had to compete against males who identify as females for the past eight years. I have lost places in races, prizes and records as a result. As a man, Martin will never be affected by this problem. It is therefore offensive that he deems fairness essential for elite athletes and, in effect, all male athletes, but not for female “fun” runners: we should put the “need for inclusion” above our “competitive priorities”. At what level of competition does Martin deem a female runner worthy of fairness?
Helen Smith, Frodsham, Cheshire

That’s the thing. It’s not ever going to be a problem for men, so how do men manage not to see what a bad look it is to tell women to suck it up? It’s like white people saying racism doesn’t matter, or bosses saying workers don’t need unions.

The vast majority of women like me, for whom sport is hugely important, will never be elite. We compete in amateur events, many now open to all who self-identify as women. It is impossible to compete in amateur cycling now in the UK if you seek a genuinely female-only event. That is devastating. Women and girls are self-excluding as a result.
Tessa McInnes, Leamington Spa

Inclusion isn’t inclusive. Ironic, ain’t it.

This. makes. no. sense.

Scroll down to the headline Transgender runner row loses sight of what race is all about to read the column I’m talking about.

Glenique Frank ran the London Marathon as a woman, placing 6,160th in a female field of 20,123. Pretty much no one would have known about this had the BBC not singled her out for interview. It then emerged that Glenique had run the New York City Marathon recently as Glen, a man. She is transgender and had been permitted to self-identify. This troubled Mara Yamauchi, a former British Olympian. “Nearly 14,000 women finished in a worse position because of him,” she said. “It’s wrong and unfair.”

Wrong and unfair how? Because “Glenique” ran in the women’s race. He’s not a woman. It’s very simple and easy to grasp.

Certainly, if Frank were denying a place or commercial earnings to professional female athletes, it would be. UK Athletics has issued a blanket ban, excluding those who have gone through male puberty from female events. And that is understandable.

No, it’s not understandable. That makes it sound as if excluding men from women’s athletics were a bad thing to do but understandable because blah blah. Excluding men from women’s anything is not a bad thing to do. Women don’t need anybody’s fucking understanding.

Yet surely there comes a point where competitive priorities are overtaken by the need for inclusion; and if there is ever an event that can accommodate both, it is the London Marathon.

No. No, there isn’t. No, there is no point where wanting to have fair competition is “overtaken” by the “need” for women to include men in women’s sports. Have your own damn inclusion but leave women alone. You need inclusion? Go include someone in your kitchen or bathroom or bedroom, but don’t do this smug vicarious “women have to be inclusive of men so that I can feel generous” thing. It’s revolting.

There may be a woman greatly troubled by finishing 6,161st because Frank participated, but maybe we could balance that with what we know of transgender suicide rates, and instances of anxiety and depression, and recognise the importance of not feeling isolated.

Or, we could not do that. We could go on letting women have women’s marathons because of what we know of women being human beings too just like trans people. We could say no to smug men who kick back and tell women to be inclusive because self-abnegation is what women are for.

“Some people say that if males are on the podium it matters, but not if they finish lower down,” Yamauchi said. “What this effectively says is that women and girls who are not that good at sport don’t deserve fairness.”

No, what it says is that trying to create a sport that is welcoming for all may be bigger than barring a community so that the 6,160th finisher gets her due.

A community? Men who want to race in women’s marathons are a community now?

Here’s a shocker. If they’re a community, so are women. If trans people are a community, so are women. Why does the community of women have to give up women’s rights for the sake of a different community? Why do women always have to be told to be kind be generous be self-sacrificing be sweet be welcoming to all? Why do women have to welcome men in their sports at all ever?

The Times:

Jenny Lindsay knows exactly when her “cancellation” began. It was June 2019 when the poet and performer tweeted her shock at the violent words of a columnist for an arts magazine, who had written: “Take out the Terf trash. Make them afraid. Get in their faces.”

How “extraordinary that such views are given an airing” in any publication, Lindsay wrote, adding “for clarity” that the columnist, a trans woman called Cathy Brennan, was advocating attacks on women, “Terf” being the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Lindsay’s response seemed reasonable, even understated, given that days later Brennan was under police investigation for lunging at Julie Bindel, the campaigner against violence against women, after an event in Edinburgh.

But the comrades were banding against Lindsay just the same.

Lindsay is the kind of woman Joanna Cherry referred to last week when the MP condemned the “new form of McCarthyism” around gender ideology, which some believe is poisoning the arts and education in Scotland.

In Cherry’s case, her in-conversation event at the Stand Comedy Club was cancelled because staff “expressed their concerns” about her views, which in Cherry’s simple description amount to “biological sex is an immutable fact”. If cancellation could happen to a public figure such as herself, she said, “just think how much more likely it is to happen to women who have less power”.

Imagine having concerns about the statement “biological sex is a fact.” Do they think it’s a fiction? Across the board? There is no biological sex?

Magi Gibson, another poet and performer, describes herself as a lifelong promoter of “dangerous women” who for decades has worked with some of the most marginalised people in society. Now she is tainted with “bigotry” and “transphobia”, and venues have been urged not to book her.

Gibson said: “I was doing an event at the Scottish Poetry Library and they were told my presence made the place ‘unsafe’. I was 67 at the time with severe osteoporosis and a broken spine. How ridiculous is that?”

Yes but women have those hidden powers you know.

S. V. Dáte reminds us that Trump tried to enact a coup and journalists should not obscure that fact.

Donald Trump is the only president who used the threat of violence and then actual violence in an attempt to remain in power — the very definition of a coup. It was the singular unique act of his tenure, truly historic. In 232 years of elections, no other president had done anything remotely close to what Trump did.

…

Yet, somehow, this key bit of context almost never makes it into news coverage of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Instead, he is treated like any other candidate — with the focus on things like how he will fend off Ron DeSantis, what nickname he’ll come up with for Nikki Haley, and what strategy he’ll use to win back suburban women voters. We’re already seeing the puff profiles about his campaign staff that make those stories possible.

Journalism has a tendency to normalize the abnormal…I guess because it’s so anxious to avoid being seen as “partisan”? Trump tried to overthrow the government, yes, but also he’s running for president, so gotta be impartial. Mentioning his treason would look so terribly not impartial.

Dáte says much the same.

How we got to a point where a man who attempted an actual coup is treated like any other candidate for office cannot really be fathomed without an understanding of how political journalism has come to be practiced.

Reporters who cover entertainment — sports, say, or movies — have long understood that their livelihoods depend on their subjects liking them. Not respecting them as professionals who have jobs to do, but actually liking them. Because celebrities can choose to speak to you, and make your career a success, or can freeze you out, making your job damned-near impossible. Exclusive interviews and quotes and photos are gold in this world. Getting them means promotions and higher-paying jobs with more glamorous outlets.

So it is, nowadays, in political journalism as well. Not government journalism, which often requires expertise in a particular subject area — banking or health care, for example — but which at the very least involves knowing the rules and processes of the governmental body in question. Political journalism today, in contrast, is really only about who is winning and, perhaps more important, who is likely to win.

It’s like the Super Bowl, or the Oscars. Why is that? Who cares about the Super Bowl or the Oscars? Why do they get such heavy publicity and reporting and air time?

I guess because it’s simple? It’s just who won and who lost. We know where we are. More complicated than that is, well, more complicated.

Subject area expertise is almost nonexistent. Instead, it’s all about how Candidate X will message voters better than Candidate Y. Covering this is obviously easier if you have good connections with “senior advisers” and “top strategists” to both X and Y, so you can file reports based on “people familiar with” X and Y’s “thinking.”

It is no coincidence that this type of reporting has come to be called “horse race” journalism. Except unlike in sports where the results — who wins, who loses, who will get high-round draft picks to start rebuilding next year — in the end carry no real consequence, the failure of political journalism can be catastrophic.

Can be, and has been, and is being. We seem to be stuck with it. It’s great for the Trumps of the world.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on It just happens to disagree with the mainstream narrative.

The thing that drives me mad is that all the “alt cures” for things like allergies, and in iknklast’s case asthma, are to bolster the immune system. The ignorance of what asthma and allergies actually are astounds me, do they really not know that these are the products of an immune system that is overreacting to stimuli? I would watch as my mother would suffer attacks strong enough to put her in the hospital in oxygen tents, until she was prescribed prednisone, thinking that would be my fate since I had many of the same food allergies she did. (I was prescribed a series of shots at age ten that deboosted those allergies and I don’t suffer from them anymore. I still remember the first bite of chocolate that I ate without realizing I would get hives.)

I was at a farmer’s market in Phoenix and asked why a jar of honey was $15. The seller explained that it was pure and raw, and that it cured all sorts of ills caused by the poisons in commercial food products. Including allergies. How about that? Honey as the Elixir for $8 more than honey in the grocery poisoner’s store. Those cancer doctors are lying about needing expensive drugs that keep you dependent on them and make you sicker!

People like Kirsch are what drives cities like Regina to stop fluoridating their water, leading to a startling increase in cavities among children within a brief time. When I first found the “Savage Minds” podcast I enjoyed the interviews, but soon got tired of Julian’s diversions into rants against neoliberals and how Joe Biden is “worse than Trump,” and how the the attempts to stop the spread of Covid during the height of the pandemic were actually the government taking control (as opposed to?) So, while she’s had some good guests lately, i just find I can’t listen to the podcast any more.

Science as a concept of formalized method of discovery of causes of natural phenomena is taking a beating, and most of the worst offenders are the ones who claim we need to be “trusting the science.” But guess what, when you claim that science backs transgender identities, don’t be surprised when you try to explain the science behind vaccines, or global warming, or any other of the sciences that really do need to be followed in our current environment.

Pharma doesn’t do itself any favors when previously open and available generic patents for low-cost drugs are bought up by venture capitalists who make those drugs unaffordable. Or when they rush drugs to market that prove to be addictive. Or claim that puberty blockers are safe and reversible, but just give kids a chance to pause and think about which puberty they want to go through.

Sonia Sodha continues:

These sweeping powers should concern all democrats. The police are supposed to treat citizens impartially, regardless of their belief. But they have a poor track record, and not just when it comes to republicans.

Take, for example, the egregious way the police have clamped down on the free speech of those who express the “gender critical” belief, protected in equalities law, that sex is binary, immutable and relevant in society. The police should be scrupulously neutral on this. Yet in recent years they have adopted the controversial position of campaigners who believe that gender identity can replace sex altogether – that being a woman is not a biological reality but instead about conforming to feminine stereotypes or a matter of inner identity, and that it is somehow “hateful” to deviate from this view.

That has led them to warn off citizens from making lawful political statements. Former policeman Harry Miller was visited by a police officer as a result of his tweets – mostly “opaque, profane or unsophisticated”, according to a judge, but well within his rights to post. There are plenty of other examples: one woman recorded herself being berated by a police community support officer for having a sticker “trans ideology erases women” in her window. A feminist activist was arrested and detained in custody for 12 hours by Gwent police on suspicion of displaying “threatening or abusive writing” after reports she had put up stickers including slogans such as “no men in women’s prisons” and “humans never change sex”. Police raided her home and, extraordinarily, confiscated a gender critical book, presumably as evidence of “wrongthink”. There are also cases of the police taking to social media to berate people for their gender critical perspectives, such as when Sussex police reprimanded someone on Twitter for saying that a convicted paedophile who identifies as a woman is biologically male, declaring: “Sussex Police do not tolerate any hateful comments towards their gender identity.”

Rape, on the other hand, they tolerate – rape of actual women that is.

The courts ruled in 2021 that both the specific police action against Miller and the College of Policing guidance used to justify it were unlawful.

This guidance tells police forces to record as non-crime hate incidents anything – including social media posts – reported to the police that is perceived by the person reporting to be motivated by hostility, including “unfriendliness”.

It’s not the business of the police to force us to be friendly.

The College of Policing guidance still hasn’t been properly revised. The Home Office released a statutory code of conduct on non-crime hate incidents earlier this year; it makes clear that the police cannot simply rely on the perception of the complainant before recording an incident and includes an example illustrating the police obligation to protect gender-critical free speech. The College of Policing reacted with its own new draft guidance that waters down the Home Office code and takes out the gender-critical example altogether, replacing it with one that includes the police removing undefined “anti-transgender” posters.

Women, meh; trans women, omigod protect them from everything including “unfriendliness” at all costs!!