Punish the woman.

The U.S. military announced on Thursday that it had removed the commander of its Pituffik base in Greenland, adding that it would not tolerate any actions that go against President Trump’s agenda.

The decision to remove Col. Susannah Meyers was announced in a statement by the U.S. Space Force that was posted on social media by Sean Parnell, the chief spokesman for the Pentagon.

While the statement didn’t cite a specific reason for her removal, Mr. Parnell said that “actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated.”

That’s disturbing. I get that the military is all about the chain of command and unquestioning obedience and all that, but it’s also about rules and laws. Trump’s “agenda” relies heavily on breaking rules and laws. Subordinates must obey superiors but they must not obey unlawful orders. Obviously this means that sometimes they have to choose which rule to break – think My Lai Massacre for example.

Looking at it as a very distant outsider it seems to me the US military stationed in Greenland has every reason to want good relations with the government of Greenland. Vance plopped in to mess that up for them. I think the reasons for the commander to want to let the government of Greenland know that Vance wasn’t speaking for them are pretty easy to surmise. Vance is their Lieutenant Calley, and the commander wanted to distance the soldiers from the bad civilian.

Mr. Parnell’s post contained a link to an article by Military.com, an independent news organization, that said Colonel Meyers had sent an email to base staff distancing herself from Vice President JD Vance’s visit on March 28.

Mr. Vance visited the base as part of Mr. Trump’s push to take over Greenland, an island that is a semiautonomous part of Denmark, for national security reasons.

“Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties,” the Space Force said in the statement.

Yes but. Highest standards of conduct yes, but what if it’s not possible to do that while being “nonpartisan”? The issue isn’t Democrats v Republicans, the issue is an ignorant lout dropping in to threaten and insult the population the commander has to deal with.

On March 31, Colonel Meyers emailed the staff at Pituffik saying that the concerns of the Trump administration as expressed by Mr. Vance did not reflect the views of the base leadership, according to excerpts published by Military.com.

Colonel Meyers and the soldiers she commands have to live there, and Vance doesn’t. It’s not hard to understand why she wanted to disavow Vance’s bullying and threats.

Trump lost. The Central Park 5 defamation case is going ahead.

Trump has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of making defamatory statements about five Black and Hispanic men who were wrongly convicted and imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park.

Philadelphia-based U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled on Thursday that the men had presented enough evidence for now to pursue their lawsuit accusing Trump of defaming them in comments he made during the 2024 presidential campaign. The judge narrowed the lawsuit, however, by dismissing a claim by the plaintiffs of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Can we get him on being too evil and self-regarding to spend one second thinking about emotional distress of other people?

(No, of course not, but we can dream.)

The lawsuit was filed in federal court last October by Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, called the Central Park Five. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages for reputational and emotional harms as well as punitive damages.

Shanin Specter, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement on Thursday welcomed the judge’s ruling and said he and his clients “look forward to discovery, trial and the ultimate vindication of these five fine men.”

…

In seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing in December that his statements about the men were legally protected expressions of opinion under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

I hope he’s beside himself with frustration.

Eyes on the important stuff.

Donald Trump is going to “make America’s showers great again” by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says.

The US president is ordering the energy secretary to rescind a change introduced by Barack Obama that restricted multi-nozzle showers from discharging over 2.5 gallons of water per minute overall. This served “a radical green agenda that made life worse for Americans”, the White House said, as Trump criticised the “ridiculous” amount of time he says it takes to wet his hair in the shower.

Suuuure it does, because he has such manly thick strong turgid hair it takes 10 times longer to soak it than it takes for average inferior people like the rest of us.

Republicans are excited about disenfranchising women.

Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked an amendment to the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act which would protect married women’s ability to register to vote.

…

The SAVE Act has come under intense scrutiny for how it would require US citizens to register to vote in person with their ID and a birth certificate, passport, or other ID that proves citizenship—something that is difficult for the 69 million married women whose current legal last name does not match their birth certificate.

Republicans have said the SAVE Act is necessary to prevent noncitizen voting. However, recent audits of voter rolls have found instances of noncitizen voting to be “vanishingly rare.”

Vanishingly rare, whatever, let’s disenfranchise women anyway.

When discussing her amendment on married women on the House floor, Rep. Dexter said: “If this amendment fails, we are putting 70 million American women at risk of disenfranchisement. 70 million. That’s one in four voters in this country.”

Rep Dexter added: “I cannot believe, in the year 2025, I have to stand here on the House floor of the United States to defend a woman’s right to vote. But I will.”

She asked her Republican colleagues to “show courage in this moment” to vote on her “common sense amendment.”

But of course they didn’t.

Look at this guy putting it right out there. “You don’t have the power,” he gloats.

You don’t have the power to tell me where I belong; that was the freedom I won for myself.

Pause for gloating smirk.

Rears back while lifting upper lip in the manner of an agitated horse; takes deep breath and blows it out.

I’m not a man, I’m a transgender woman. And uh…I don’t know how to break this to you [pause for smirk] but I’ve got the tits to prove it. [more smirking and face-making] Why don’t you fuck yourself sideways, how’s about that.

Got that? He detests women, and he claims to be a woman so that he can express his hatred and get pats on the head for it.

Ok who knew there was such a thing as “enby feminine”???

I certainly didn’t.

BH is one Blair Hamilton.

WHAT IS ENBY FEMININE?

What possible meaning can that have?

Enby=non-binary=neither female nor male.

Pick a story, bro.

BH who idennifies as enby-feminine has a page at the University of Brighton (not to be confused with the University of Sussex). It is eloquent and excitable.

Introducing Blair Hamilton, a trailblazer in the world of sports research at the University of Brighton’s School of Sport and Health Sciences. Not only are they a dynamic lecturer in Exercise and Health at the School of Applied Sciences, but they’re also a driving force behind the scenes as the lead investigator of the groundbreaking “Sporting Performance of Athletes of the Gender Spectrum” study.

Blair’s curiosity knows no bounds. Their main focus? Unraveling the impact of gender-affirmative endocrine care on the incredible athletic abilities of transgender athletes. In simpler terms, they’re delving into how hormone treatments affect these athletes’ performance, paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable sports environment.

But that’s not all! Blair’s zest for knowledge extends to the realm of bones and exercise. They’re passionately exploring how our bones respond to the magic of movement, especially during exercise. By understanding this intricate dance, Blair envisions a future where exercise becomes a key ingredient in building and maintaining strong, healthy bones.

I hate to rain on the parade but it’s already common knowledge that exercise is crucial for strong bones.

Anyway. Here’s to all the feminine enbies out there in fantasyland.

Is it ok for Trump to manipulate the stock market right out in the open? Oh sure. Where’s the harm?

When Donald Trump offered some financial advice Wednesday morning, stocks were wavering between gains and losses.

But that was about to change.

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social at 9:37 a.m.

Less than four hours later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on nearly all his tariffs. Stocks soared on the news, closing up 9.5% by the end of trading. The market, measured by the S&P 500, gained back about $4 trillion, or 70%, of the value it had lost over the previous four trading days.

So he did people a little favor; what’s the big deal?

Democratic senators are calling for investigation.

“Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense?,” said Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff in a post on the platform BlueSky. Added Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on X, “An insider trading scandal is brewing.”

A key question is, Was Trump already contemplating the tariff pause when he made that post?

“Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it,” said Trump himself when asked yesterday directly about when he arrived at his decision, but then added to the confusion, stating, “Fairly early this morning.”

…

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics law expert at Washington University School of Law, says Trump’s post in other administrations would have been investigated, but is not likely not to trigger any reaction, save for maybe more Truth Social viewers.

“He’s sending the message that he can effectively and with impunity manipulate the market,” she said, “As in: Watch this space for future stock tips.”

Smart shoppers buy Trump.

When infant-tech goes wrong:

A woman in Australia has unknowingly given birth to a stranger’s baby, after her fertility clinic accidentally implanted another woman’s embryos into her.

Oops! Was her fertility clinic drunk at the time or what?

The mix-up at Monash IVF in Brisbane, Queensland has been blamed on human error, Australian media reports. “On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” CEO Michael Knaap said, adding that everyone at the fertility clinic was “devastated” at the mistake.

Last year, the same clinic paid a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement to hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite them being viable.

So you can see why they were devastated – that’s some expensive blundering right there.

According to a spokesperson for Monash IVF, staff became aware of the problem in February when the birth parents asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another clinic. “Instead of finding the expected number of embryos, an additional embryo remained in storage,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by ABC.

Monash has confirmed that an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the wrong person, resulting in the birth of a child.

To lose one embryo, Monash IVF, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose hundreds looks like carelessness.

Is market manipulation legal? Is it mostly illegal but legal when Trump does it? Asking for a friend psycho.

But also

Ah, good. Now we know how he’s working the magic.

Oh good god.

At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Donald Trump Truth Social 04/09/25 01:19 PM

Why does he say “hereby”? Does he think that makes a tweet an official government act?

Jamelle Bouie asks probing questions about Trump’s hypothetical “reasons” for the tariff war.

…How do you revitalize American manufacturing if manufacturers can’t reasonably import the materials they need to build factories and produce goods? Where is capital supposed to come from? How do you reset the nation’s relationship with its trading partners if those partners are forced to treat you as a bad force that can’t be trusted?…

There is a hypothetical president with a hypothetically similar agenda who could answer these questions. This actual president cannot. He did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview.

Egzactly. Nothing he does is the product of a rational thought process. It’s all libido, all rage and greed and spite. He’s not a guy who thinks. He’s a guy who erupts. You might as well seek reasons for his belches.

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance.

I suspect that “apparently” was forced on Bouie by the editors – as a hedge against accusations of libel. It weakens the claim.

His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

So what does that tell us about Trump? That basically he sees everyone as a rival and, in fact, an enemy. Literally everyone, his own children included.

Trump’s desire to dominate others is the driving psychological force of his administration. His obsession with territorial conquest — seen in his effort to coerce the Canadian government into relinquishing its sovereignty as well as his calls for the acquisition of Greenland and the Panama Canal — is an obvious product of his predatory approach to human interaction. His authoritarian attempts to cow and coerce key institutions of civil society into compliance with his agenda and obedience to his will are, likewise, a kind of dominance game. They are meant to demonstrate his mastery over his perceived enemies more than they are to achieve any policy aim. He even said as much during an event on Tuesday, when he bragged about the law firms “signing up with Trump” and said that “they give me a lot of money, considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”

That goes a long way to explain what’s so loathsome about him. It’s the emptiness. That’s always been obvious – he’s an empty bladder with a lot to say, all of it wrong and bad and hostile. It’s been obvious but it’s also been elusive, because how does a person like that not jump off a cliff?

Manipulate much?

The New York Times tells us of a man who deliberately went into a women’s toilet and brags about it to adoring journalists. The Times of course presents his intrusion rather differently.

A transgender woman was arrested at the Florida State Capitol last month after she used a bathroom there to protest a state law that blocks transgender people from using a rest room that aligns with their gender identity.

Or to put it another way, a man who claims to be a “transgender woman” used a women’s bathroom to protest a state law that forbids men to use women’s rest rooms. It doesn’t sound quite so right-on-ish put that way, does it.

It almost doesn’t matter how the Times words it, though, because of how the Times illustrates it. At the very top of the page, between the subhead and the lede, we get a sweet tender photo of the darling vulnerable young lassie.

That is a very carefully chosen photo. The innocently parted lips – the wide eyes – the fluffy hair – the strappy undershirt – golly gee, one doesn’t know whether to cuddle her or rape her.

The transgender woman, Marcy Rheintgen, 20, said on Sunday that she had intentionally broken the law. Civil rights experts said that this was the first known case of someone being arrested for challenging a law that bans transgender people from using bathrooms in government buildings that do not align with their gender at birth.

Ms. Rheintgen said she had been feeling emotional about what she described as dehumanizing language used by elected officials to talk about transgender people when the idea came to her: “What if I just broke the law because the law is so stupid?”

I wonder if Mr Rheintgen paused for a single second to think about how women might be feeling about men like him using our bathrooms.

So anyway he went to the Florida House office building and found the second floor women’s bathroom.

Two police officers spoke to Ms. Rheintgen outside the bathroom and told her that she would be given a trespass warning if she entered, according to an arrest report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The police had seen a copy of Ms. Rheintgen’s letter, said the report, which used male pronouns to refer to her.

The report used male pronouns to refer to him because he is a male. He is a male. His fantasies about himself are his own business, but he has no right to impose them on women who just want to use the god damn toilets without self-obsessed men intruding on them…or spying on them or assaulting them.

Oddly enough the Times doesn’t say anything about that. All the compash is for the guy who makes pouty face.

There are 14 other states that ban transgender people from choosing their own bathroom, but those apply only to some — not all — government buildings and schools.

Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a L.G.B.T.Q. civil rights organization, said in a statement that Ms. Rheintgen’s arrest was a “deliberate erosion of human dignity.”

Oh is that so? Well what about the human dignity of women? Why do you not give a fuck about that?

I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out.

Updating to add:

Wait a second.

It occurred to me to wonder why I didn’t notice any beard traces, so I took another look at the photo, and – there’s an oddity. Am I imagining it? I don’t think so. The part of the face where the beard would be looks bleached. Photoshopping gone wrong? Even the tip of his nose is too pale.

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph is not impressed by John Oliver’s sneers at women who don’t want men taking over their sports.

John Oliver, the British comedian whose viral rants have made him an unlikely standard-bearer for liberal America, broadcast his latest sophomoric skit on transgender athletes late on Sunday night. It was full of his usual fallacies: that biological males depriving women of sporting glory was somehow analogous to taller basketball players competing against shorter ones, or to Michael Phelps dominating swimming despite being “half-dolphin”. And yet the timing could not have been worse. For at the very moment this segment dropped, portraying sport’s trans scandal as somehow a niche issue, a women’s pool final in Wigan was being contested by two trans-identifying males.

Two males and zero women – the final was the 1 v 1 type, not the team type or pairs type or other elegant variation. Zero women in their own fucking sport. Insulting enough yet?

The contrast was grimly revealing. On one side of the Atlantic, a comic preaching to the converted in his New York studio was demeaning the integrity of female sport for clicks. On the other, each woman at that pool tournament was feeling the painful cost of her spineless administrators sacrificing her right to fair sport on the altar of gender ideology.

A male comic at that. The male takeover of women’s sports is never going to harm him personally, so he’s free to give zero shits about women and say so in public.

To anybody still demanding why we cannot all just be kind and inclusive, consider this: the adverse impact of this inclusion drive is endured, without exception, by women. You do not see women trying to make it in men’s cycling, or swimming, or fencing. You do not see women gatecrashing the final of the men’s pool. And that is because basic biology dictates the benefits in sport flow in only one direction, with mediocre males annexing victories and medals once they start masquerading as female.

And yet most of the left doesn’t give one tiny shit about that. There I was thinking the left had finally learned to stop ignoring women back in the ’70s or so. Silly me.

Trump and his gang are firing thousands of federal employees who do vital work, but they apparently think it’s totally justifiable to spend millions to throw a birthday party for Dum Don.

President Donald Trump is making plans for a military parade in Washington, D.C., on his 79th birthday, according to a report. A source in the capital told the Washington City Paper that Trump has earmarked June 14—which is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army—for the event.

The display of military might will march around four miles from the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, to the White House, the D.C. source told the publication.

That shit’s expensive. It’s not a matter of just summoning a few people who are on the payroll anyway and telling them to walk up and down for the afternoon.

Trump and his South African friend take an axe to government agencies but spend freely to celebrate The Divine Monarch.

President Trump previously pushed for a grand military parade in 2018 during his first term in the White House but was stymied by estimates the event would cost $92 million, according to the Associated Press.

The event had been slated to include tanks, fighter jets, and historic military planes.

The plans emerged after Trump’s 2017 visit to France where he witnessed the Paris Bastille Day celebrations which included displays of heavy military machinery. Trump said the U.S. is “going to have to try and top” the French display, according to the AP.

More toys. More, bigger, louder, more expensive toys. And a pony.

Celebrity hillbilly calls Chinese factory workers “peasants.”

Speaking to Fox News last Thursday, Vance defended President Donald Trump’s market-hammering tariffs and railed against the “globalist economy.”

“What has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, it’s based on two principles – incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us,” Vance told news show “Fox & Friends.”

“To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

To underline the obvious: if they’re manufacturing they are not peasants.

To underline the equally obvious: don’t forget yer raisin.

A hashtag on Vance’s remarks became the top trending topic on Weibo on Monday night. By Tuesday afternoon, it had racked up 140 million views.

“Look, this is their true face — arrogant and rude as always,” said a comment with 2,900 likes.

“We may be peasants, but we have the world’s best high-speed rail system, the most powerful logistics capabilities, and leading AI, autonomous driving, and drone technologies. Aren’t such peasants quite impressive?” another said.

Trump – another genuine peasant – thinks he’s a brilliant insult comic, and Vance is trying to keep up.

Bad Kennedy fires key official to make room for his own lethal crankery:

The former top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration says he was forced out of his job for trying to protect vaccine data from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press Sunday he refused to hand over unrestricted access to a vaccine safety database to the Health and Human Services secretary and his team, fearing that the information might be misused, manipulated, or deleted altogether.

Initially, Marks said that he tried to be on good terms with his vaccine-skeptic new boss regarding vaccine safety, making plans to develop a “vaccine transparency action plan.” Marks also gave Kennedy and his team the ability to view reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, but drew the line at allowing them to edit the data.

“Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust [them],” Marks said, using an expletive. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”

Any guesses on what the expletive was? Mine is “the fuckers.”

But ever since Kennedy’s swearing in as secretary of Health and Human Services, his true colors have been on full display, as he has responded poorly to the initial deaths from the measles outbreak, expressed support for dubious measles treatments, ended support for vaccine initiatives, and even at one point claimed the measles vaccine was as bad as the disease itself.

Over the weekend in Texas, Kennedy attempted some damage control by saying, “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” But, while on that visit, he also met with two doctors who claim to have treated children with measles using the steroid aerosolized budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin, calling them “extraordinary healers.”

What kind of metastatic ego does it take to think that One – who has no education in medicine or disease of any kind whatsoever – knows more about medical issues than the many thousands of people who do have such education? How conceited do you have to be to think you know more about vaccination than the people who actually do know more about it?

Infuriating.

The fix is in.

The Supreme Court has granted a request by the Trump administration to temporarily block a lower court order requiring that a deported Salvadorian man be returned to the US.

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to pause a ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be brought back from El Salvador by midnight on Monday.

The government has said Mr Garcia was deported on 15 March due to an “administrative error”, although they also allege he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

They admit it was an error but they insist on leaving him there anyway.

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi welcomed Justice Roberts’ stay, and said the administration will “continue to fight this case and protect the executive branch from judicial overreach”.

But it won’t even begin to protect people from executive branch overreach, false arrest, and deportation to a hellish prison.

Last week, US District Judge Paula Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, grilled the Trump administration’s attorney during a hearing over the deportation.

Justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni told her that Mr Garcia “should not have been removed”.

Over the weekend, Bondi announced Mr Reuveni – a 15-year veteran of the department – had been placed on paid administrative leave for failing to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States”.

By “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States” she means “repeat the Trump Justice Department’s lies and threats.”

In a scathing opinion released on Sunday, Judge Xinis found that the US government’s error “shocks the conscience”. She said the government had acted “without any lawful authority” and was holding Mr Garcia in “direct contravention” of US law.

The Trump administration escalated the case to a Maryland appeals court, which denied their request to stay Judge Xinis’ order. The Supreme Court then issued its ruling just hours ahead of the deadline to return Mr Garcia by 23:59 EDT on Monday night (03:59 GMT Tuesday).

In other words the Supreme Court is in the can for Trump.