Stop right there, bro.

So, the requirement was that you hadda check all the right boxes or they weren’t gonna let you in. So the requirement was that you had to say that you were ccccccccis gender born. So in other words, a transgender lesbian was not gunna be accepted into this group. [dramatic pause] Why not?? I’m just as much female as every other person on the planet at this point in my life.

So every other person on the planet is female. I did not know that.

Unless…does he mean “every other person” in the sense of alternating? So exactly half of all persons are female? No, because he doesn’t say it that way. And because he goes on to say, smirking –

I’ve made the proper adjustments, and all my parts are female, so [whiny child voice] why can’t I be part of this lesbian group, why do I hafta be born cisgender female in order to be part of their group? What gives them the right to say who’s female and who’s not female?

Which is a stupid question, because they’re not saying who is and who’s not, they’re asking applicants to say. This guy could just say he is.

I just found that totally rude and wrong on so many levels.

Well that’s women for you.

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Reward.

Indeed, there is an awful lot of armchair generaling and Monday morning quarterbacking going on, not just in this thread but all over, almost all of it from people who have never been placed in mortal peril by another human being and who have no training in self-defense. I freely admit that I have relatively little experience with such peril, and have thus far only had the merest physical training, though I have read fairly extensively on the philosophy of self-defense and had discussions with people who’ve trained much more thoroughly than I have.

The first duty in any altercation where you believe your life or health to be in jeopardy is to retreat and escape. Running should always be your first resort, if it is at all possible to flee.

Failing that, the second duty is to de-escalate, to use any means of rhetoric and persuasion, or simple compliance (e.g., giving up your money or valuables without resistance to a mugger) to convince your assailant to back off or otherwise leave you in peace.

Failing that, the third duty is to intimidate your assailant; to present them with a counter-threat such that, if they are rational, they will think twice before pursuing an attack. This can include brandishing a weapon (with the caveat that you should never, ever, EVER draw a weapon you are not prepared to use), confidently squaring off against the assailant, or screaming and making a racket to intimidate them and hopefully draw some attention from passersby (though in crowded cities almost everyone ignores such rackets).

Failing that, however, your last duty is to survive a physical altercation with someone who is intent to do you harm. This generally means you have to subdue the assailant with overwhelming, sudden, decisive force. Most real physical fights are decided in seconds and by centimetres, with one wrong move dooming one of the participants to defeat.

In a real physical altercation, one can run through this four-part checklist in a fraction of a second. And if you are not being directly threatened yourself but are instead acting on behalf of others, people weaker and more vulnerable than you, retreat and flight become much more complicated still.

Life is not a video game; there are no do-overs, no power rankings or levels, no way to tell with certainty how strong or trained or be-weaponed an assailant is until it is quite probably too late and you wind up with a shank in your gut or a bullet in your skull. There are many martial arts such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Aikido which emphasise non-lethal detention of an assailant, but these arts require years of dedicated training to confidently employ.

Neely’s death is a tragedy, as was his life, and Penny is certainly no comic-book superhero. The fact that he is being fêted by the MAGA crowd, who are just using the both of them as cultur-war pawns, is moderately disgusting — Penny is himself just as much a victim of circumstance as was Neely, and I doubt he relishes or revels in having taken a human life…or, at least, I like to think he doesn’t.

Nevertheless, given a sober account of the facts of this case (not unlike a sober account of the facts of the Rittenhouse case a few years back), there is no other conclusion than that Penny acted in a legally (and morally) defensible manner when he intervened in an altercation between a raving lunatic and a terrified mother and child, and the death of the assailant was a tragic contingency of the altercation. It should not have happened, but the chain of causation and culpability stretches a long way back and does not deserve to fall squarely on Penny’s shoulders. Yes, Penny and his fellow intervening passengers might have been able to subdue Neely without killing him, but it is also quite possible that if any of them had relented, at least one of them could be dead. Nobody asked for this tragedy, not even really Neely — or at least, not a Neely who hadn’t been ravaged by homelessness and drugs and despair.

Both Penny and Neely are symptoms of a diseased society which is obviously mouldering from the inside, where technocrats craft algorithms into the future whilst living hand-to-mouth in shoebox apartments that should’ve been condemned decades ago, and walk through streets and ride on trains and buses evermore crowded with the cast-offs of this brave new world.

Yes, people are starting to get sick of mentally-ill homeless people turning their commutes and their recreation into harrowing affairs. They are sick of economists and politicians telling them they live in the best, richest, freest, most democratic societies the world has ever known even as the ostensible governing bodies of those societies seek to impoverish and perhaps even imprison their citizens if they dare to claim otherwise. They are sick of having to pay forty percent of their take-home pay on rent for a squalid tenement in neighbourhoods constantly reeking of human urine, where the likelihood of getting accosted or assaulted by a deranged drug-addict only seems to be going up, and where nobody seems to have any idea how to make any of it better but by God they’ll call you a fascist if you point out that this state of affairs is unacceptable.

Most of these people still consider themselves quite progressive, at least for now, and most of them probably hate Penny and Trump (and Rittenhouse and Musk and Rogan and all the other progresive bug-bears, past and present). But people can only take so much cognitive dissonance, and society can only take so much shrugging disdain for the very concept of order or the rule of law or the social contract. Eventually even these direct victims of the rot of modernity will not be able to square their ideology with the reality they must wade through on a daily basis, and they will demand that something be done.

We had better hope that liberalism can do that something, because we do not want to see what the other guys have in mind.

Five weeks ago:

A man was taken into custody after five people were stabbed in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District Friday afternoon.

The stabbings happened near the intersection of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street around 2 p.m. Friday.

That intersection is a bus stop. I was at that stop a week or two ago, on an outing to I forget where, and it was off the charts horrible. It’s always horrible, and has been for years, but that day it was extra horrible, with too many ruined people performing their ruin in full public view. Have I mentioned that Seattle’s a mess? I have. It’s incredibly beautiful, and it’s a mess.

The Seattle Police Department confirmed four victims were transported to Harborview Medical Center for treatment and one other person was released at the scene. A Harborview spokesperson said the four victims were in “critical” condition as of 4:45 p.m. Friday.

…

Witnesses to Friday’s attack said the suspect walked up and stabbed the victims with no provocation or interaction.

Yes see that’s what I can’t be doing with. No random knife attacks at bus stops please.

So, that was November 8. An hour ago:

King County Metro has announced the immediate closure of the bus stops at the intersection of 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, citing illegal activity and safety concerns for riders and bus drivers.

The intersection has been a trouble spot for years and is known for open drug use, stolen goods sales, and recently was the scene of a mass stabbing.

It is, at the same time, a very busy bus stop, used by a lot of people with not much money, not much power, not much in the way of alternative transportation. It’s a sort of crossroads between two ghettos. Is there an approved euphemism for ghetto? If there is I don’t know it. 12th and Jackson is at the core of what’s called Chinatown/International District; part of CID is called Little Saigon. South of there is Rainier Valley which is where all those people who weren’t white enough were directed. It’s a vital bus stop – that’s why I was there: it’s the only way to get to vast swathes of the city. It’s vital but it’s a disaster zone.

I’ve been wondering for years why the people who run Seattle can’t make it safe.

End of today’s jeremiad on life in the big city.

The Guardian and Nicola Sturgeon get together to scowl at the stubborn women some more.

“Scotland is a country where, within our lifetimes, gay male relationships were still criminalised. So the significance of that journey is impossible to overstate.”

Although the legislation has had a profound impact – “there’s no doubt we are a much more equal and tolerant society than we were 10 years ago” – Sturgeon said the past few years had been a reminder of the need for vigilance. “When rights are under threat, whether it’s abortion rights in America or LGBT rights in other parts of the world, that’s when it really matters to stand up and be counted.”

Objection your honor.

There is no such thing as LGBT rights. The T is not the same thing as the LGB. We can’t have the most basic clarity on this subject if the Sturgeons of the world keep mashing them together.

She said she had noticed progressive voices “shying away … in the face of the sort of pushback that comes from rightwing media or some very loud populist voices in the political space”.

This was understandable, she said, given her own experience of advocating for the reform of transgender rights in Scotland: “I’ve got more abuse on the trans issue than I got on any other issue in my entire time in politics.”

That’s because “the trans issue” is its own thing, quite separate from the LGB one, and it much too often entails a bad-tempered intrusion on women’s rights, so of course she gets angry pushback when she keeps trying to force women to surrender.

After the success of same-sex marriage, equality campaigners argued that reform of gender recognition rules (GRR) for transgender people was the obvious next step…

Yes they did, and they were completely wrong, and that mistake has caused and is causing a new war on women.

…and Sturgeon pledged to champion the reform when she became SNP leader and first minister.

And in so doing, sold out women. That’s why we’re angry.

But the passage of the reforms – which were agreed by a cross-party majority in December 2022 before they were blocked by the UK’s Conservative government – resulted in one of the most acrimonious periods of her leadership , with some critics accusing her of betraying women.

This is the Guardian, so of course there is no explanation of why “her critics” say she betrayed women.

Sturgeon of course does not explain, let alone apologize.

Another bum-kissing paean to Judith Butler, this one from EL PAÍS.

Butler — a pioneering voice in feminism, gender studies, critical theory, and contemporary philosophy — registered as non-binary in California years ago. While their pronouns changed to they/them, they chose to keep their name, a decision, they say, [that] surprised the courthouse clerk at the time.

Really??? How fascinating. Can you tell us more? What was she wearing? What was the clerk wearing? What was the weather like? Were there refreshments?

To be fair, most of the interview is unsurprising and not terrible. Even Judith Butler can talk sense some of the time. But then we hit a bump.

Q. Do you understand the concerns of feminists who think that gender could result in the erasure of women?

A. Some feminists, I think unwittingly, have allied themselves in places like the U.K. and Spain with the far right when it comes to instigating this phantasm about gender. I understand those fears, but that doesn’t mean that I think they’re based on knowledge. Perhaps those feminists need a better understanding of who trans people are. Womanhood won’t be erased just because we open the category and invite some more people in.

Excuse me?

That amounts to saying the meaning of the word “woman” won’t change just because we open the category and invite some men in.

Sorry, Professor Butler, but yes of course it fucking will. Women will still exist, yes, but the meaning of the word that names them will be different. And that matters, for a million obvious reasons.

This is a moment for expanding alliances, not to have sectarian struggles about bathrooms. Women know what it’s like to be denied health care. They are currently being deprived of access to reproductive health in several parts of the world, including the U.S. Women know how difficult and necessary it is to struggle for autonomy. So why would they not support trans struggles for health care and to live free of the fear of violence?

One, “struggles for health care” means struggles for medical interventions to change the outward markers of sex/gender. That’s not health care, it’s something else. Nobody is objecting to actual health care for trans people. Obviously trans people should get care for illnesses and injuries and the like. Should the male ones be allowed to bunk with the women in the hospital? No, but that’s not “health care”; that’s logistics.

Two, women’s struggles for autonomy are not the same thing as trans people’s “struggles” to get everyone to pay attention to them all the time no matter what.

Three, the “violence” thing is just silly or bullying or both. Nobody is saying hooray for violence against trans people. Some trans activists, on the other hand, are shockingly enthusiastic about violence against feminist women who point out that men can’t be women.

But I’ll let her have the last word, because she can talk sense when she wants to.

I don’t agree with a lot of what she stands for — fracking, migration, Palestine — and I did not actively support her candidacy. But I did vote for her. We have a pernicious history of misogyny, which is being celebrated in the person of Trump. Guilty of sexual crimes, he has done more than any other American person to demean and degrade women as a class. The people who say, “Oh, I don’t like that part of his behavior, but I’m going to vote for him anyway because of the economy,” they’re admitting that they are willing to live with that misogyny and look away from his sexual violence. The more people who say that they can “live with” racism and misogyny in a candidate, even if they’re not enthusiastic racists, the more the enthusiastic racists and the fascists become stronger. I see a kind of restoration fantasy at play in many right-wing movements in the U.S. People want to go back to the idea of being a white country or the idea of the patriarchal family, the principle that marriages are for heterosexuals. I call it a nostalgic fury for an impossible past.

Not bad.

Golly gee, suddenly the Catholic church in Ireland is more progressive than those dreary old feminist women.

Well maybe not more progressive exactly, but more something. Adventurous? Excitable? Generous with other people’s rights?

It’s so fascinating, because the church has always treated women like rebellious stupid garbage, but women who pretend to be men are a whole other story.

You’d think someone had put a gun to her head to force her into long term binding.

Yes that’s a good idea, let’s eliminate the FDIC and all other protections from banking.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to significantly reduce, merge, or even eliminate the top bank regulators in Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump advisers and officials from the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) inquired about the possibility of abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), according to the newspaper.

Good good good so banks can lose all our money and we have no recourse. Fabulous plan.

Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could be absorbed into the Treasury Department, the Journal said, adding that any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action.

And Congress is in Trump’s pocket so the action will be prompt and obedient.

Nick Fish at American Atheists tells us in AA’a latest newsletter:

American Atheists doesn’t always weigh in on presidential cabinet nominations, so when we do, you can trust enough evidence has mounted to warrant a response. 

For example, we issued a statement last month regarding the selection of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. We received some flak for that, but as an organization that values reason and science, ignoring his long history of spreading dangerous misinformation is not an option. 

Granted, atheism is not the same thing as reason & science, but they are related. Theism is a form of Big Lie, so it’s not surprising that atheists can be interested in other big lies. No doubt the flak they got was because talking about Kennedy is political, and atheism isn’t necessarily political. But that’s the thing about Trump and all his works: he’d be just as loathsome, or more so, if he were in that other party. Kennedy would be just as wrong and dangerous if he were in that other party.

Similarly, we cannot remain silent about the nomination of former Fox & Friends weekend co-host Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense. With an annual operating budget of $900 billion and over two million civilian workers and troops, it is the federal government’s largest agency. If confirmed, Hegseth would be the least experienced defense secretary in American history. 

We’re compelled to oppose Hegseth’s nomination not because his résumé is short but because his reputation is long in religious extremism, and we have grave concerns about the consequences of elevating a person who unreservedly romanticizes Christian warfare.

Oh does he. Well that’s exciting.

Hegseth has several tattoos that have been flagged by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism for their adoption by far-right extremists, including mass murderers Mauricio Garcia and Anders Breivik. One of them, “Deus Vult,” is associated with militant white supremacist groups who, like Hegseth, revere the myth of a white Christian medieval past and romanticize the Christian slaughter of Jews and Muslims during the Crusades. One expert on religious violence said, “There is no version of ‘Deus Vult’ that means anything other than a call for violence.” 

…

Last year, Hegseth and his family joined a school and church associated with Doug Wilson, a co-founder of CREC and founder of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. Wilson, an accused abuser and town tyrant, has defended slavery and believes women shouldn’t have the right to vote. He has said Christian dominance is a divine conflict in which women and children are legitimate military targets. Likewise, in The American Crusade, Hegseth calls for a “360-degree holy war” to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents.” He goes on to say, in the event of such a civil war, “The military and police… will be forced to make a choice.”

Fasten your seatbelts.

That’s nice. Invite a guy who killed a homeless person to the game. How very trumpvance.

A New York City subway rider who was acquitted this week of killing a homeless man during a confrontation on a train has joined US President-elect Donald Trump as a guest of honour at a popular American sporting event.

Daniel Penny, who became a conservative cause celebre, was pictured attending the Army v Navy American football game near Washington DC with Trump and Vice-President-elect JD Vance.

…

A jury cleared Mr Penny of criminally negligent homicide on Monday for using a fatal chokehold to restrain Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, who had been shouting at other passengers and asking for money, last year.

So Trump decided to reward him for killing the homeless man.

Listen up. Shouting at people on public transportation (or pretty much anywhere) is crap behavior. There’s a lot of crap behavior on the buses in Seattle, because there are a lot of people ruined by fentanyl in Seattle, and that’s a bad thing. It is not, however, such a bad thing that it warrants killing people engaging in the bad behavior. Stopping the bus and telling them to get out, yes. Calling the cops if they won’t get out, maybe. Killing them, no.

Next point. Conspicuously rewarding people for killing a homeless person is not a good thing to do. It is, in fact, a vile, ugly, stomach-turning thing to do.

Speaking about Mr Penny’s acquittal earlier this week, Vance said this week on X that Mr Penny was “a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone”.

No, not for having a backbone. For killing someone. Note that Mr Penny ruined a guy’s life: the guy whose life he ended by choking him.

If Mr Homeless had been assaulting a passenger, it would be another story. But unless the reporting here is totally dishonest, he wasn’t. You don’t get to assault people just for shouting.

The incoming vice-president added that it was “a scandal” that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ever prosecuted the case.

Why? Is it really a virtuous act to kill a homeless guy because he is shouting at people on a bus? There are steps between “do nothing” and “chokehold.”

We’re in for a horrible four years.

Well, you can call it a “light jab,” or you can call it a stupid childish insult from the stupidest, most childish, peak epically vulgar head of state on the planet.

US President-elect Donald Trump took a light jab at his Canadian counterpart on Tuesday, referring to Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada”.

Imagine Trump considering it a “light jab” if some wag said he was the governor-elect of Florida.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump remarked that Canada should become the 51st US state – something that was “in no way a serious comment”, said Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc, who accompanied Trudeau to the dinner.

“The president was telling jokes, the president was teasing us,” he told reporters early this month.

No he wasn’t. He thinks he’s better than everyone else, so his “jokes” are never mere jokes or mere teasing (and “teasing” is in general lightly disguised bullying anyway, even when it’s not Trump doing it). People shouldn’t make light of Trump’s disgusting manners.

Yeah this is totally normal, this is not disgusting at all, women have no reason to object to this, Yellow Shirt dude just wants to have fun.

Not creepy AT ALL, do you understand?

I’m not surprised. I’d be happy to be surprised, but I’m not.

Also, she’s a very bad writer.

Dim Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

President-elect Donald Trump has praised the polio vaccine as the “greatest thing,” but a lawyer affiliated with Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top health agency has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the vaccine used in the United States.

The lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates. Siri has been working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a vaccine skeptic and Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services – to choose officials to serve in the incoming administration.

I wonder if they have paused at all to think about the dangers of polio.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself a polio survivor, issued a warning about the issue Friday that was apparently intended for Kennedy.

“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease,” he said in a statement. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Well, Mitch, these are your guys.

If Kennedy is confirmed as head of HHS, he’ll oversee the FDA and could take the rare step of intervening in its petition review process. In a recent interview, Kennedy told NBC News that he wasn’t going to take away anybody’s vaccines but said, “People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information.”

No they oughtn’t. People ought not to have a choice to drive 120 mph on city streets and they ought not to have a choice to infect others with a dangerous disease.

Amnesty International is not an adult organization.

Once is enough.

Amy Hamm in The National Post a couple of weeks ago:

Is it discrimination when doctors make care decisions that account for a patient’s extreme obesity? In British Columbia, astoundingly, it might be.   

A Canadian woman who identifies as an “unapologetically fat intersectional feminist” won her bid to bring an obstetrician to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) for alleged discrimination on the basis of her size and body mass index (BMI), of 46, after the physician referred her to a high-risk birth centre during her pregnancy. 

Sigh. He’s a doctor; he’s an obstetrician. He’s not some random person shouting insults, he’s not a bunch of people bullying her, he’s a doctor whose job it is know what’s a risk and what to do about it.

It’s also true that losing weight is not a simple thing, and for some or many people it just isn’t possible. The body fights back and tweaks the metabolism so that losing weight becomes more and more difficult, which eventually means it’s impossible.

Does it follow that the doctor should not have referred the woman to a high-risk birth centre? It does not. Whether she’s high risk or not is not a political question, it’s a medical one. It’s his job to make that call; it would be malpractice not to.

[T]he BCHRT has expressed an interest in exploring the “social construction of disability” in the forthcoming hearing. The tribunal’s latest ruling states that “disability under human rights legislation, including under the Code, extends beyond biomedical conditions and functional impairments to perceptions and stereotypes,” apparently including stereotypes about being fat.

Blah blah, but that won’t help the woman and/or baby survive the birth.

Glaringly absent from Lindberg’s entire case is any discussion of an infant’s right to a safe delivery guided by evidence-based care. The hospital where Lindberg wanted to give birth is classified as “low risk and without the benefit of specialized staff and equipment,” according to Fraser Health Authority. Obesity during pregnancy is linked to numerous health risks for both the mother and baby, including gestational diabetes — which Lindberg developed and required insulin for — birth defects, preterm birth, stillbirth, and a difficult delivery on account of the infant being oversized. That the human rights tribunal even mentioned, in its latest ruling, that Lindberg’s baby was born “without complication” can be none other than an admission that all parties recognize the risk that was inherent in her birth.

“Born without complication, no thanks to us.”

Lindberg got lucky with a healthy baby. Let’s hope her child does not require future therapy for the trauma of discovering that her mother fought so hard to prioritize “fat activism” over her own safe entry into the world. Because that is what this case ultimately comes down to: a fat activist performing a malicious and attention-grabbing stunt. 

At the expense of her passenger.

Whaddya know, Wisey the Pretty is still at it.

The tundra has flipped.

The Arctic tundra is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by frequent wildfires that are turning it into a net source of carbon dioxide emissions after millennia of acting as a carbon sink, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Tuesday. This drastic shift is detailed in Noaa’s 2024 Arctic Report Card, which revealed that annual surface air temperatures in the Arctic this year were the second-warmest on record since 1900.

“Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts,” said Rick Spinrad, a Noaa administrator.

…

Human-caused climate change is also intensifying high-latitude wildfires, which have increased in burned area, intensity and associated carbon emissions.

Wildfires not only combust vegetation and soil organic matter, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, but they also strip away insulating soil layers, accelerating long-term permafrost thaw and its associated carbon emissions.

In other words the news is bad bad bad.

Junior Kennedy wants to bring back polio.

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

What more is there to say? Trump’s choice for health secretary wants to kill or maim thousand or millions of people.

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Polio wasn’t just “one of the most feared” diseases, it was one of the deadliest diseases. It was one of the most feared because it was so contagious and so terrible. The objective badness is much more to the point than how feared it was. Junior Kennedy fears vaccines, and he’s dead wrong to do so.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism.

That investigation has already been done. Many times, for many years. Nobody needs Junior Kennedy to “investigate” anything. The man’s an idiot.

Newspapers should not lie to us.

And they should not lie to us even more when the lie is that women commit men’s crimes.

Manchester Evening News tells that very lie, repeatedly.

A judge has jailed a ‘dangerous’ woman for violent physical and sexual abuse.

The scare-quotes should be on “woman” on account of how the violent physical and sexual abuser is A MAN.

Angel Hill, 20, was handed an extended sentence for her crimes. Minshull Street Crown Court heard that Hill, who is transitioning from male to female, had demonstrated ‘violent, manipulative and controlling behaviour’.

He’s a man. Furthermore, he’s a man committing decidedly male crimes.

She pleaded guilty to assault by penetration, sexual assault, strangulation and threatening with a bladed article in relation to the victim. 

Oh really. Assault by penetration? Sure, it’s possible to use objects, but what “assault by penetration” generally suggests is rape, with a penis. Newspapers should not be lying and obfuscating this way, especially when it’s a matter of putting men’s loathsome crimes against women on women.

Manchester Evening News also for some reason obfuscates the sex of the victim, without even saying why.

In a statement read to the court, the victim told how the incidents had affected their mental health. Defending, Julian Goode said that the defendant is still a young person and has not yet reached full maturity.

Why is the victim a they? Why is the perp a she and the victim a they? Why report the case at all if you’re going to blur out most of the relevant facts?

Bad man refuses to get out.

State Opposition Leader John Pesutto has vowed to stay on in his role despite a damning Federal Court judgment finding he defamed ousted MP Moira Deeming and revelations the high-stakes case could have been settled for $99,000.

Pesutto was ordered on Thursday to pay $300,000 in damages and savaged over his time in the witness box in a 250-page judgment that found he injured Deeming’s reputation by repeatedly and falsely implying that she knowingly associates with neo-Nazis.

I think people of this type must actually persuade themselves that not believing in Magic Gender is pretty much the same thing as associating with Nazis. That’s how morally warped and confused they are.

Angry Liberal MPs were on Thursday night discussing whether to move against their leader of the past two years. Their mood was further darkened by the news that had Pesutto taken up a settlement offer from Deeming in February, the case could have avoided court.

A source familiar with negotiations leading up to the trial revealed Deeming offered to walk away for a payment of $99,000 plus costs with no other conditions. Her demands eventually ramped up towards $2 million with assurances of her return to the Liberal party room, which Pesutto refused.

On top of the $300,000 damages payout, Pesutto now faces a hefty legal bill with costs, yet to be determined, set to reach upwards of $1.5 million for Deeming alone, according to three sources familiar with the case. The state branch of the Liberal Party had refused to indemnify Pesutto’s legal costs.

Maybe the fashion for men bullying women over Magic Gender is starting to fade away?

Justice David O’Callaghan found Pesutto’s evidence contained untruths, that he was “infuriatingly unresponsive” during cross-examination, and that he had given “dubious” explanations and calculated answers in an attempt to defend Deeming’s claim against him.

Other than that…