Originally a comment by Artymorty on Draw your weapons.

It’s the “two kinds of experts” problem: science-minded people, polite and overcautious to a fault with their criticism, try to rationalize puberty blockers like they’re antidepressants — they only discuss them in terms of potential mood improvement.

That’s because it’s not scientifically possible to evaluate the religious belief that our sexed bodies are profane while our “gender identities” are sacred.

The cultists who’ve taken over the gender clinics don’t even care if puberty blockers have a negative impact on the children’s mood. They don’t see puberty blockers as antidepressants, they see them the way they see all “gender medicine”: as a mandatory rite of passage to bond new recruits into the group.

The media has to stop playing games and being coy about the facts: they need to report that sex is real and binary and that “transgender identity” is a non-natural kind — a social construct that emerged from within a religious subcultural group. Journalists need to ask every single “expert” they consult about “gender” whether they believe in the facts of biology or not, in order to separate out the gender cultists from the fact-based experts in this field, who have so far been far too reticent to call out the pseudoscientific metaphysical beliefs that plague the trans movement.

Ah yes…if you don’t like the findings, bury them.

Oyyy.

Uh, yeah, because that’s the whole point.

“Prominent torturer Fiendy Painmaker has refused to publish data from a study of torture, fearing that the results will be weaponized by critics of torture.”

Listen up, Johanna Olsen-Kennedy: the whole point of medical studies (as of course you know perfectly well) is to determine whether they are beneficial or the other thing. If a study finds out that X is the other thing, aka harmful, it’s not your job to hide the data on the grounds that critics of X will cite it in order to prevent further harm. You’re not supposed to want to keep perpetrating harm.

Rather late in the day, we’re having the “Trump is a genuine fascist” conversation.

(Well of course he is. It’s not as if there’s some high bar to being one. It doesn’t require erudition or physical fitness. He’s every inch a fascist, and it’s all right there on the surface where we can see it.)

John Kelly, a former four-star Marine general and former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, hammered his old boss in a stunningly public fashion on Tuesday — just two weeks before Election Day.

Kelly, who had previously refrained from discussing his time in the White House so openly, said in expansive interviews with The New York Times that Trump’s discussion of using the military against the “enemy within” — who, in Trump’s words, included Democratic foes — pushed him to come forward. His comments come after several other prominent former administration officials, including those with military experience, expressed concern about Trump’s fitness for office.

“And I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it,” Kelly said.

The former general held nothing back, arguing that Trump could fit the bill of a “fascist.”

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he told The Times.

Quite. What’s in there that doesn’t fit Trump?

Mark Milley, a retired Army general and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is a “fascist to the core.”

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” he said.

And of course not just this one. If he gets in again he’ll be a danger to many other countries. Ukraine is obviously high on the list.

Another brave courageous indomitable fierce proud man invades women’s sport.

Hundreds of female golfers have complained about the participation of Scottish-born transgender player Hailey Davidson in the penultimate stage of the LPGA Tour’s qualifying competition.

Gets it wrong the way they always do. If even the Telegraph refuses to get it right what hope is there?

The issue is not that Davidson is “transgender”; the issue is that he’s a MAN.

Davidson, a 31-year-old professional originally from Ayrshire but now based in Florida, has said that the intention is “to make Scotland proud” by earning a card on the women’s premier circuit.

Second para and still doing it. “the intention” ffs – HIS intention.

Newspapers and tv and radio news need to make it clear from the very first words that the subject is a man shoving his way into a women’s sport. They need to do the opposite of carefully hiding that fact until late in the story.

But after progressing through August’s first stage of Q-School , the former player on a US male college team was accused of acting “unfairly”…

Yet again. “the former player on a US male college team” – talk about circumlocution!

He’s a male. News outlets should be saying that up front.

…with Amy Olson, a two-time major runner-up, railing against Davidson being allowed to compete. “These women have worked too hard and too long to have to stand by and watch a man compete for and take their spot,” she said.

Finally the Telegraph allows it to be said, by someone else. It does however compensate by sneering at the woman with “railing.”

It has now emerged that this view was held by many in the field, with the International Women’s Forum revealing that 275 signed a letter sent to the LPGA, the US Golf Association and the International Golf Federation, urging Davidson’s removal from the tournament.

But the Telegraph is too chickenshit to say it up front.

“We all know there can be no equal athletic opportunity for women without a separate female golf category,” the letter, as reported by sports website OutKick, read. “Yet, the Ladies Professional Golf Association continues to propagate a policy that allows male athletes to qualify, compete and win in women’s golf, even as several national and international governing bodies of sport and state legislatures increasingly reject these unjust and inequitable policies that harm female athletes.

“LPGA policy does not explicitly state eligibility based on sex. It is essential for the integrity and fairness of women’s golf to have a clear and consistent participation policy in place based on a player’s immutable sex. There are differences between the sexes – female and male – that specifically affect our sport of golf.”

The letter goes into detail on the differences. Davidson responds with sympathy and understanding.

Joke.

Davidson, who almost qualified for the US Women’s Open in June, has remained unapologetic and instead lashed out at the detractors. “I will never understand athletes who blame a transgender competitor on their own athletic failures,” Davidson wrote on Instagram. “If you don’t take accountability for your failures then you will never actually be good enough to make it.”

How absolutely fucking breathtaking is that?

Pride versus Pride With Mission Creep.

But there is no “LGBTIQ+ community.” There’s only forced teaming of the LGB with the TIQ+.

So much lying in one little article…

Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard’s dogged fight to keep her name out of the media

His. His name. He’s a man.

Olympic weightlifting hopeful Laurel Hubbard has failed in a nine-month battle to keep her name secret over a driving charge.

Hubbard, 41, a transgender athlete who is trying to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, was charged with careless driving causing injury after her vehicle fishtailed on a sharp bend near Queenstown on October 24, 2018.

Her car hit a vehicle carrying an Australian couple in their 60s. The male driver spent nearly two weeks in Dunedin Hospital and needed major spinal surgery on returning to Australia.

His. His name, his vehicle, his car. He was driving his car too fast so he crashed into another car, causing a painful serious injury to another person.

Hubbard, who is the daughter of cereal magnate Dick Hubbard, pleaded guilty in January this year and offered to pay the couple about $13,000 including $1000 for emotional harm. 

A trifling amount.

The case could not be reported because Hubbard, represented by lawyer Fiona Guy Kidd QC, successfully applied for suppression orders at each of the five stages of the court process.

Why should he be able to do that?

The High Court in Invercargill this week overturned the suppression orders after an appeal by Stuff.

At sentencing on February 4, Judge Bernadette Farnan discharged Hubbard without conviction noting she was a first offender, the low level nature of the accident, Hubbard’s remorse and the reparation payment. She disqualified her from driving for a month (the normal disqualification is six months) and ordered her to pay about $13,000 to the Australian couple. 

What “low level nature”??? Major spinal surgery, two weeks in the hospital? How is that low level? Dangerous driving isn’t a joke.

Are some more equal than others?

You might as well unpack your suitcase for that trip to Mars.

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let’s imagine that Mars’s lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.

Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.

But surely we can pack enough breathable air in that suitcase? Can’t we?

Some people have the idea that making Mars’s atmosphere breathable is as simple as introducing some green plants to it: They will eat up sunlight and produce oxygen, and then people can breathe it. That is uhhhhh the circle of life (?) or whatever. They call this idea “terraforming.”

At this point in our discussion I must acquaint you with two dear friends of mine. Their names are The South Pole, and The Summit Of Mount Everest.

The South Pole is around 2,800 meters above sea level, and like everywhere else on Earth around 44 million miles closer to the sun than any point on Mars. It sits deep down inside the nutritious atmosphere of a planet teeming with native life. Compared to the very most hospitable place on Mars it is an unimaginably fertile Eden. Here is a list of the plant-life that grows there: Nothing. Here is a list of all the animals that reproduce there: None.

Well…maybe they just haven’t tried hard enough. The people who go to Mars will try harder.

Musk is bribing voters.

A group of 11 former Republican officials have become the latest public figures to raise questions over the legality of cash incentives being offered by tech billionaire Elon Musk to voters before the US election on 5 November.

Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which was set up to support Donald Trump in the presidential contest, calls on registered voters in seven swing states to sign a petition. Each day until the election, one signatory is selected at random and awarded a million-dollar prize.

But legal experts and several Democrats have suggested the giveaway may break American law by offering money for an act that requires someone to be signed up as a voter.

And besides Musk doesn’t even go to this school.

The deck, of course, is stacked.

With former President Donald Trump on the precipice of possibly becoming president again, let’s recall that he’s on the 2024 ballot thanks partly to the Supreme Court. 

I’m not talking about the ruling granting him broad criminal immunity. Though the Roberts Court’s handling of that appeal helped Trump push off a trial in the federal election interference case — possibly forever, if he wins the election and deploys his reacquired presidential power to crush it.

I’m talking about another Jan. 6-related appeal from the last Supreme Court term, one that more directly positioned the Republican to take office again: Trump v. Anderson.

It was there that the justices reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to keep the former president from the ballot. The case was technically about one state during the primary process, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling effectively scrapped nationwide efforts to enforce the constitutional provision barring oath-breaking insurrectionists from office.

Which, I have to say, I’ve never been able to understand and probably never will. He broke his oath and he urged the volunteer insurrectionists to insurrect on his behalf. You’d think that would be enough.

As a reminder, here’s what that post-Civil War provision, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, says: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Aid and comfort. He gave lots of aid and comfort. He urged them on. The only reason he didn’t rush over there to join them is because the Secret Service wouldn’t let him.

Another thing Trump has been pushing lies about: FEMA diverting its money to “migrants” and thus having no money for disaster relief.

False claims that federal emergency disaster money was given to migrants in the U.S. illegally have spread quickly in recent days, boosted by former President Donald Trump and some of his most high-profile supporters.

Trump repeated one of the more extreme baseless allegations during a rally Thursday in Saginaw, Michigan, saying that the money had been stolen.  “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump said.

That was October 4. He’s still doing it.

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on Be sure to omit all the important facts.

RILEY GAINES et al v. NCAA et al is an excellent reference. This class action lawsuit is funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS). The ICONS web page about the lawsuit has the latest amended version of the lawsuit as a PDF file (208 pages, filed Sept. 23, 2024).

In this latest version, the list of Plaintiffs (p. 168) adds Brooke Slusser, a volleyball player at San Jose State University (SJSU). In the expanded section on Volleyball (pp. 151-163), she adds details of her experience with Blair Fleming on the SJSU team. Of course there are safety concerns about Fleming hitting harder than women, but I also found these topics that I can group into blockquotes:

651. Brooke was frequently assigned by the SJSU athletic department to room with Fleming on road trips to competitions even though Fleming is male and without Brooke being informed by SJSU that Fleming is male.

658. Brooke did learn however that the reason she had been assigned to room with Fleming so often during road trips in the 2023 season was that SJSU officials asked Fleming who he wanted to room with, and he chose Brooke.

659. At the times she was assigned to room with Fleming during the 2023 season, Brooke had no idea that Fleming was being given the choice of which girl he wanted to room with on team road trips.

672. When the 2024 SJSU women’s volleyball team members returned to campus to begin training for the 2024 season, Brooke learned that none of the nine (9) new recruits on the team for the 2024 season had been told that Fleming is male and participating on the women’s team as a result of the NCAA Transgender Eligibility Policies, even though this was now a well-known fact to the athletic department and virtually everyone at SJSU.

673. Brooke became aware that upon learning that one of their teammates was a trans-identifying male, several of the new recruits became upset, as it was too late for them to transfer, and they felt they had been misled.

690. Due to public attention to Fleming’s transgender status, during the 2024 season SJSU officials have met with all the players on the SJSU women’s volleyball team and again instructed the girls on the SJSU women’s team that they are not to confirm or state to anyone that Fleming is transgender or male, nor are they permitted to criticize Fleming being on the team, or to state their personal feelings or concerns about the matter, including their safety concerns.

691. The SJSU officials said the girls should not worry about any media attention they were getting, because the story “hasn’t hit any media source that matters.”

692. The SJSU officials have also told the girls that to speak about Fleming being transgender would “take away Blaire’s power” and that they “have no right to tell Blaire’s story” or to talk about how Blaire being on the team is impacting them.

698. Due to the NCAA’s Transgender Eligibility Policies which permit Fleming to play on the SJSU women’s volleyball team and which led to SJSU recruiting Fleming, giving Fleming a scholarship, and allowing Fleming to be in positions to violate Brooke’s right to bodily privacy, Brooke has suffered physical and emotional injuries, embarrassment, humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish and suffering.

Oops now Trump has got himself a libel suit. Fully deserved.

Five men who were wrongfully convicted as teenagers in the so-called Central Park Five jogger rape case sued Donald Trump on Monday, saying the Republican presidential nominee defamed them by falsely claiming they killed someone and pleaded guilty.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, cites several statements Trump made about the men during his Sept. 10 debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, after she blasted Trump for taking out an ad in 1989 calling for the then-teen defendants to be executed.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated [at the debate] that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the civil suit said.

“Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed,” the complaint said.

The suit alleges that Trump’s conduct toward the men at the debate “was part of a continuing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct dating back several years, thus constituting a continuing tort.”

The plaintiffs in the case, who now refer to themselves as the Exonerated Five, are Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise. Salaam is a member of the New York City Council.

Pay up Don.

Newsthump (i.e. satirical):

McDonald’s has been praised by the liberal media for giving work experience to a convicted felon who is currently looking for a new job.

Florida resident Donald Trump, 78, has a string of felony convictions that will quite rightly prevent him from seeking gainful employment in a number of businesses and organisations, but McDonald’s said it was willing to offer a helping hand to anyone trying to get back into work.

McDonald’s spokesperson Chuck Williams told us, “I understand that this man lost his job almost four years ago now, and that this job loss led to some poor life decisions that have left him with a significant criminal record – but for one morning, we were willing to look past the convicted felon to the man himself.”

Mind you, the criminal record goes back way before the job loss, although the crimes were never prosecuted.

Williams was asked if, based on his performance during his work experience, he would consider giving Trump a full-time job. He told reporters, “A job? Like on salary? Christ no! He’s got 34 felony convictions, you’d have to be a lunatic to hire him full-time for any sort of real job.”

Harsh but fair.

I don’t normally quote the Christian Post, but I’m not a fanatic about it.

An Arkansas pastor has been arrested on 100 counts related to child pornography after a tip led authorities to investigate.

James Vincent Henry, 43, of Delight, Arkansas, has been taken into custody by Pike County Sheriff’s deputies after special agents with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received two cyber tips from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children last month, KARK reported.

Henry is the pastor of Crossroads Assembly of God Church in Delight and has served as a foster parent to 70 children over the years, according to Church Leaders.

Oh has he. So we know what those unfortunate 70 children were subjected to.

The investigation began on Sept. 25, when Special Agents with the Arkansas State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force executed a search warrant, stated the Arkansas Department of Public Safety. During the investigation, agents reviewed digital evidence collected from the search warrant and information drawn from social media messaging apps.

At about 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Henry was arrested and charged with 100 counts of Possession, Viewing, and Distribution of Child Pornography (CSAM). He was transported to the Pike County Detention Center, where he remains in custody.

Amen.

Advance cheating:

Key rightwing legal groups with ties to Donald Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states that are already sowing distrust of election processes and pushing dangerous conspiracy theories, election watchdogs warn.

They also warn that the groups appear to be laying the groundwork for a concerted challenge to the result of November’s presidential election if Trump is defeated by Kamala Harris.

That’s a good look. Decide ahead of time, in the absence of any facts, that the election will have been corrupt because you don’t like the outcome. You don’t see too many will have beens in normal life, because in general we understand that we don’t know now what will have happened then.

Voting experts don’t see much merit to the group’s lawsuits and many others filed by Trump-allied groups.

“Many of these suits seem like vehicles to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation,” said Leah Tulin, a senior litigation counsel with the Brennan Center. “In other words, they read more as press releases than serious legal claims.”

All hat and no cattle, as the saying goes.

Election watchdogs say the aim of these pro-Trump groups with election-denialist track records, coupled with the surge in lawsuits by other Maga allies, is to cast doubts about election rules and security, and are harbingers for challenging the results in key states if Trump loses.

So even if he loses the tedium will go on and on and on and on…………

This isn’t three stoned kids in a garage, this is a government. It says so right in the lede.

The SNP government has claimed there are 24 different genders.

In official guidance, the devolved administration clarified a list of two dozen terms it said the gender identity of members of the public could be recorded [as?] by public bodies.

Just two dozen, eh? You know there will be people wanting new ones added to the list, and pitching fits if anyone tells them no.

Ok let’s have a look.

The 24 genders

Cisgender

Trans man

Trans woman

Non-Binary

Trans – not otherwise specified

Agender

Trans masculine

Trans feminine

Genderfluid

Genderqueer

Questioning

Intersex

Assigned female at birth – not specified

Assigned male at birth – not specified

Pangender

Bigender

Autigender

Androgynous

Gender non-conforming

Detransitioned

Neutral

Demigender – female

Demigender – male

Demigender – not otherwise specified

So, most of this profundity is just cheating – just different names for the same (silly and non-existent) thing. The rest of it is just making shit up. It’s all making shit up, with not a whole lot of difference among the kinds of shit.

What stumps me is why adults are humiliating themselves this way. The kids are still going to think you’re a boring old dinosaur who doesn’t know anything, so it’s really not worth making a fool of yourself trying to keep up with their religion.

“Data collection by public bodies should serve a clear function,” Dr Kath Murray, part of the MurrayBlackburnMackenzie policy analysis group, said. “It is not a validation exercise.

“It is difficult to see why any public body would spend resources classifying data on trans status into multiple subjective subcategories, many of which are circular, hard to understand, and/or contested.

“It is particularly surprising that the government guidance lists ‘intersex’ as a gender identity, and refers to ‘cisgender’ as an identity subcategory, a term that many people find offensive.”

Offensive and stupid.

Reduxx reports:

The father of a transgender athlete has been sentenced to 60 months in federal prison for distributing child pornography. Marc Jacques, the father of Maelle Jacques, cited his son’s transgender identity and his own advocacy for transgender rights in his letter to the court requesting a non-custodial sentence.

Why, on earth, would either of those (let alone both) be reasons not to lock him up? There are reasons to question the usefulness of custodial sentences in general, but how in hell does his son’s trans idenniny equal a reason to be lenient to him in particular?

More the other way around, I would think.

Maelle Jacques, 16, is a trans-identified boy who has become a controversial athlete at Kearsarge Regional High School for advocating for the elimination of female-only sports. In April, Maelle testified at the New Hampshire state legislature in opposition to a bill seeking to prohibit males from self-identifying into women’s sports.

In short he’s a determined enemy of female people. I’m not seeing how that’s a reason not to put Daddy in a cell.

Another character reference was provided by Dr. Elizabeth Counselman-Carpenter, a professor of social work at Adelphi University, who, like Maelle and Remi, pointed out that Jacques was a “committed member of his community and LGBTQIA+ activist” in her argument against a custodial sentence.

Which communinny? The child pornography one?

A pearl beyond compare. 59-year-old man simpers in a short red party dress that would look bizarre on a woman half his age, and questions the queenliness of someone who is not a 59-year-old man in a short red party dress.

Brilliant. Take Back the Night warbles about how incloooosive it is, meaning it inclooods men. Just fucking brilliant: resist rape culture by pretending men are women.

“All women are welcome – we are a trans-inclusive march.” By “all women” they of course mean “including men who say they are women.” Take back the night and then hand it over to men.