We are so screwed.

Joe Biden’s doctor met with a leading Washington neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday.

The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly, in an interview with ABC News arranged following his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential TV debate with Donald Trump.

According to White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years.

Biden refuses to take a cognitive test.

Later in the broadcast, Biden was asked if he would do an independent neurological and cognitive exam and release the results. “I get a cognitive test every day,” Biden said. “Everything I do – you know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”

No no no no no that’s not how that works. Also are you aware that you’re not running the world?

He did two radio interviews in which the White House wrote the questions and ordered the interviewers not to ask any other questions. The interviews were to demonstrate how brilliant he is.

[T]he eight visits Kevin Cannard has made to the White House over the past 11 months are certain to raise further questions about the 81-year-old president’s mental abilities in the wake of his debate with Donald Trump and subsequent verbal mistakes, including during a radio interview on Thursday when he said he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president”.

So he’s trans now?

We are so so so screwed.

Hm. Boy says “I’m gay not queer” and all hell breaks loose.

12-year-old boy has allegedly been referred to counter-terrorism authorities after posting an online video saying “there’s no such thing as non-binary”. The child, who remains unnamed, reportedly created the video to counter bullies who had mistakenly assumed he supported transgender rights. In the footage, he reportedly declares: “[I’m] gay not queer.”

Are people required to say they’re queer now?

According to the boy’s mother, school officials informed her that the video had prompted them to report her son to Prevent, the Home Office programme aimed at thwarting potential terrorists.

Ah. Kid age 12 says he’s gay and the school concludes he’s a terrorist.

The boy’s mother told the [Daily] Mail that both agencies had visited her in what felt like an “interrogation” after she uploaded the video on his behalf.  She said: ‘We think that he was targeted as the children believe gay people agree with trans ideology. He made a video which I uploaded to YouTube where he said ‘there are only two genders’ and ‘I’m gay not queer’.

“The school phoned up and were incensed by it. They said that they would refer him to Prevent for that video. They said that he was at risk of radicalisation – not that he had been, but was a risk when he gets to 13 and is entitled to his own social media accounts. There was a risk he would fall in with far right groups.”

Because it’s far-right to say you’re gay not queer.

Make it make sense.

Harry Miller answers the difficult question “What the hell is going on Harry?”

How can they do both?

The Fawcett Society July 5:

After yesterday’s election, there are more women MPs in our Parliament than ever before. It’s an historic moment, but the work has only just begun.

There is a huge opportunity for this new critical mass to work together, across party lines, to improve the lives of women across the country. 

Drawing on inspiration from the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, the Fawcett Society will shortly convene all women MPs to facilitate the launching of a powerful women’s caucus.

Ok, good, but…

There’s their “position on sex and gender” to consider.

In response to recent questions, the Fawcett Society’s position on sex and gender (which we consulted on widely in 2018) remains unchanged (available here).

To be clear, we are a trans-inclusive organisation. We represent women in all their diversity in the fight for equality. Fawcett recognises the importance of intersectionality and the impact this has on women’s experiences.

So by “women” and “the lives of women” and “all women MPs” they mean women plus men who call themselves women – so they don’t actually mean women.

The youngest MP:

A 22-year-old elected as an MP with a razor-thin majority has said he does not want his age to be the focus as he heads to Westminster.

Labour’s Sam Carling is likely to be the “baby of the House”…

I.e. the youngest, the Beeb helpfully explains.

However, he doesn’t want his age to be a focus. “I want us to get away from this strange mindset towards younger people’s age. As far as I’m concerned we’re just the same as anyone else. I just want to get on with the job.”

Ah well there you are then, demonstrating one of the reasons there is and must be an age threshold for people in government. The younger you are, the less experience you have, and the less time you’ve had to learn and observe and think and self-correct and all that kind of thing. You don’t even have a fully mature brain yet.

Very young people can be brilliant at campaigning (for want of a better word). The US Civil Rights movement was jam-packed with very young people, and their passion and courage were vital to its success.

But the Nazi movement was also full of very young people, as was Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Youth does not always have the answer.

He only recently became interested in politics, saying he saw a connection between social and economic decline and “decisions made in Westminster”. Mr Carling grew up in a rural town in the north-east of England, which he described as “a very deprived area”.

“I saw a lot of things getting worse around me. I was concerned about shops closing on local high streets that used to be a thriving hub and are basically now a wasteland. And the sixth form closed, but I didn’t make the connection to politics until later.”

My point exactly. Making connections is an adult skill that takes time and learning and experience to develop.

In a colder place, Sherpas are picking up garbage left on Mount Everest by climbers. There’s a lot of it.

The highest camp on the world’s tallest mountain is littered with garbage that is going to take years to clean up, according to a Sherpa who led a team that worked to clear trash and dig up dead bodies frozen for years near Mount Everest’s peak.

The Nepal government-funded team of soldiers and Sherpas removed 11 tons (24,000 pounds) of garbage, four dead bodies and a skeleton from Everest during this year’s climbing season.

But there are maybe 40 to 50 tons left.

Since the peak was first conquered in 1953, thousands of climbers have scaled it and many have left behind more than just their footprints.

I hate that “conquered” trope. It’s so stupid and so pointlessly aggressive. Why can’t the word just be “climbed”?

Of the 11 tons of garbage removed, three tons of decomposable items were taken to villages near Everest’s base and the remaining eight were carried by porters and yaks and then taken by trucks to Kathmandu. There it was sorted for recycling at a facility operated by Agni Ventures, an agency that manages recyclable waste.

Nice of all those “conquerors” to leave all that crap on other people’s mountain.

Why do climbers leave garbage behind?

“At that high altitude, life is very difficult and oxygen is very low. So climbers and their helpers are more focused on saving themselves,” Khadga said.

Then don’t go. If you can’t climb the mountain without leaving all your garbage behind, then don’t climb the mountain. Nobody needs you to climb the mountain, so don’t.

By the way its name is not Everest, it’s Chomolungma.

It’s warm over here on the west coast.

Extreme heat continues to inflict wide swaths of the U.S. This weekend, the brunt of the hot temperatures is falling on the West Coast and parts of the East Coast.

Afflict, not inflict.

In total, over 132 million people were under some form of a heat warning as of Saturday evening, according to Heat.gov. “These conditions will be extremely dangerous and potentially deadly if not taken seriously,” the National Weather Service said on Saturday.

Human-caused climate change is fueling longer and more intense heat waves, and making dangerously high temperatures more common.

And even now, after all this time to get familiar with hot weather, Seattle people don’t understand air conditioning. Grocery stores still fasten their doors open when it gets hot. I don’t have enough eye rolls to deal with it.

It’s probably the case that trans women don’t have ovaries but a cervix, I understand, is something you can have following various procedures and hormone treatments.

Top right Lisa Nandy:

Q: Should child rapist Christopher Worton be housed in a women’s jail now he identifies as a woman?

A: I think trans women are women and they should be accommodated in a prison of their choosing.

Bottom left Louise Haigh:

I fully support introducing self-declaration [when a man legally becomes a woman because he has said he is a woman.]

Bottom right Bridget Phillipson:

Q: Say I’m a male ‘trans woman’. Where do I go to the toilet?

A: If you’ve gone through the process of recognition – the female toilets.

The process of recognition – that should be the name of a pub.

But what do they mean?

After yesterday’s election, there are more women MPs in our Parliament than ever before. It’s an historic moment, but the work has only just begun.

There is a huge opportunity for this new critical mass to work together, across party lines, to improve the lives of women across the country. 

Drawing on inspiration from the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, the Fawcett Society will shortly convene all women MPs to facilitate the launching of a powerful women’s caucus.

Cool, but do they mean women, or women plus men who call themselves women?

It does make a difference.

Jemima Olchawski, CEO of the Fawcett Society, said:

“Thanks to the hard work of organisations working to change the culture of politics, there are more women in the House of Commons than ever before. But this won’t mean anything unless they deliver real change for women across the country. 

We need women to come together across parties to deliver reform that makes a tangible difference. With women still taking home £574 less than men per month, sexual harassment rife in our workplaces and so much harm done to women by public services, the need has never been more urgent. Fawcett will facilitate this cross-party working by convening women MPs to organise the caucus.” 

It also won’t mean anything if it turns out that by “women” they mean women and men who call themselves women.

Good news.

Does she actually mean women?

So many people are asking.

Neil Gaiman accused:

Bestselling writer Neil Gaiman has strongly denied allegations of “non-consensual sex” and “sexual assault” reported in a Tortoise investigation led by Rachel Johnson.

Neither of Neil Gaiman’s UK publishers ha[s] responded to requests for comment following the reports. The allegations are explored in a four-part podcast, “Master: The Allegations against Neil Gaiman”. 

Roz Kaveney, friend of Neil Gaiman since the 1980s, and so, so proud of it, and Laurie Penny, who did a sycophantic interview with Gaiman in 2013, are both surprisingly silent on the recent (horrific) allegations of rape and sadistic violence by him against young, vulnerable women.

We live in interesting times. Women who say men are not women get flayed while men accused of rape and sadistic violence get ignored.

H/t Mostly Cloudy.

The Daily Beast on the Total Immunity threat:

When the Supreme Court declared presidents immune from prosecution for their official acts Monday, one man immediately feared what it meant: Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-nemesis, Michael Cohen.

We all immediately feared what it meant. The horror of it is all too obvious.

But quibbling aside, he does have a specific point.

Cohen is the only person summarily jailed by Trump, an experience he says awaits many more people if the Republican candidate wins in November.

Cohen admitted in December 2018 that he lied to Congress and paid illegal hush money to Stormy Daniels, and began a three-year sentence in May 2019. A year later he was granted early release from prison under arrangements to reduce the number of federal prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he also happened to have a tell-all book—full of lurid details and one which he had heavily signaled would be damaging to Trump—coming out in September of that year.

It was that July he was presented with new early release conditions, reproduced today by The Daily Beast. At first, the release forms seemed straightforward. But after the formal procedures about Cohen having to subject himself to home monitoring and other conditions federal inmates agree to, there was something fishy.

The first red flag was the absence of a serial number in the top left corner. Then came language that, in effect, made waiving Cohen’s First Amendment rights a condition of his release.

In the Federal Location Monitoring Program Participant Agreement form he was told there could be, “No engagement of any kind with the media, including print, TV, film, books, or any other form of media/news… Prohibition from all social media platforms… No posting on social media and a requirement that you communicate with friends and family to exercise discretion in not posting on your behalf or posting any information about you. The purpose is to avoid glamorizing or bringing publicity to your status as a sentenced inmate serving a custodial term in the community.”

It was in effect a gagging order courtesy of the Department of Justice—and Cohen believes it came direct from Trump.

He believes that the documents offer an insight into how Trump could silence his political opponents by making them sign away their First Amendment rights as a condition of release.

Cohen refused to sign, sued, and spent 15 days in federal custody before a federal judge described the papers as an act of “retaliation,” and freed Cohen.

So, that’s interesting.

People are waiting impatiently for Starmer to name his Minister for Women and Equalities.

Many are saying by rights it should be Rosie Duffield.

More likely it will be India Willoughby.

Ugh. Speaking of that whole issue of competence versus politics…defiance and “grit” and determination aren’t always or necessarily virtues.

US President Joe Biden vowed to stay the course in his re-election bid and defeat Donald Trump in a defiant speech on Friday, as questions continue to swirl over whether he will drop out of the race.

At a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, the 81-year-old acknowledged his disastrous performance in last week’s CNN debate. “Ever since then, there’s been a lot of speculation. What’s Joe going to do?” he told the crowd. “Here’s my answer. I am running and going to win again,” Mr Biden said, as supporters in the crucial battleground state cheered his name. It marked his latest commitment to staying in the race as he seeks to defuse a political crisis that has snowballed in recent days.

Blah blah blah. And then he put on a surge of speed and crossed the finishing line, and then she took a deep breath and danced en pointe despite her broken ankle, and then they wiped away their tears and told their mother they had no idea where the baby had gone.

We get it. It’s a Frank Capra movie. It’s every Frank Capra movie. It’s a feel-good story. It’s not, however, a guide to what’s the right thing to do in every situation. Biden can be defiant all he likes but if he’s not in fact physically or mentally up to the job, if he’s neither physically nor mentally up to the job, all the Hollywoody defiance in the world isn’t going to change that.

The 17-minute speech, which was more energetic than his widely-panned performance on the debate stage, comes at a critical moment for his campaign, with donors and Democratic allies considering whether to stick with him.

I hate to break it to us but one 17-minute speech isn’t going to be the most he ever has to do in a second term.

“I see all these stories that say I’m too old,” Mr Biden said at the rally, before triumphing his record in the White House. “Was I too old to create 15 million jobs?” he said. “Was I too old to erase student debt for five million Americans?”

That’s a stupid question. It evades the point. Is he too old to stop evading the point? I don’t know, but he’s determined to keep doing it.

“Do you think I’m too old to beat Donald Trump?” he asked, as the crowd responded “no”.

Yes, I do. I don’t want to think that, I sure as hell don’t want it to be the case, but I can’t determine realities with the power of thought. I think this whole thing is a huge disaster.

Such a fine young man.

Humanists UK on the long history of godless Prime Ministers:

In the run-up to the general election, several newspapers published stories saying that Keir Starmer would be the UK’s ‘first atheist Prime Minister’ – but as Humanists UK pointed out at the time, that simply was not true! As a non-religious person with a belief in ‘irreducible human dignity’ (as he put it to a recent biographer), Sir Keir is only the latest in a long line of non-religious and humanist heads of government in the UK.

I’m envious. It’s decidedly not the case over here in The Colonies.

Prior to becoming the first ever Labour Prime Minister in 1929, Ramsay MacDonald was the Chair (sometimes ‘President’) of Humanists UK, in 1902 and 1904. Although [he is] sometimes remembered, even by biographers, for his early religiosity, MacDonald’s views changed significantly with age – starting off strict Calvinist, then Church of Scotland, before later giving sermons that were non-committal about the existence of god as a Unitarian, and then being drawn into the British Ethical Culture movement and the London Ethical Societies that together merged to become today’s Humanists UK.

…

Although a controversial figure for making political compromises and forced to implement austerity measures once in office, MacDonald is significant in history for being one of the earliest examples of an explicitly humanist Prime Minister. The fact that this is often left out of histories is a great example of a pattern in historical writing that the Humanist Heritage project was set up to challenge and redress.

Humans have a very conspicuous advantage over this putative “God” person: humans can be talked to, argued with, held to account. “God”? Not so much. Postulating a magic being undetectable to human senses who made and controls everything but can’t be personally confronted is a pretty reckless way to run a planet.

I’m surprised to see Churchill in the list. I don’t think I knew that.

Churchill was an agnostic atheist whose writings to friends evinced a deep personal dislike of Christianity. In one letter he said ‘I do not accept the Christian or any other form of religious belief.’ In common with the German communist philosopher Karl Marx, he likened religion to a drug, calling it a ‘dangerous narcotic’. He was no secularist, saying of the state Anglican church that he ‘supported it from the outside’.

Keeps the plebs in line wot wot.

Clement Attlee was a politician whose socialist and humanist values underpinned a commitment to implementing sweeping reforms in social welfare. Described by historian R.C. Whiting as an ‘unobtrusive atheist,’ Attlee believed in ‘ethics’ without ‘mumbo-jumbo’, and earned a reputation as a principled, decisive, yet modest politician.

Despite being a heathen.

Originally a comment by Sackbut on Look how energizzzzzzzz.

Kevin Drum raised an interesting point on his blog. He began by expressing some sympathy for the Republicans who don’t like Trump, but nonetheless feel compelled to vote for him. Drum then muses about what it would take for him to vote for the Republican candidate for president (not specifically Trump, just in general).

At least one commenter noted that we aren’t just electing a president, we are electing an administration. The people appointed and hired by the president and those around him matter as much as the president. And they almost always come from one political party, that of the president. Given this, and even absent the aberration that is Trumpism, I cannot conceive of a situation where I’d vote to give the Republican Party the administration. The goals and aims of the Republicans are contrary to what I think is reasonable. I am much more aligned with the positions of the Democratic Party, and would vote to give them the power to create an administration, even if I didn’t care for the candidate.

Trump and his followers have gravely damaged the Republican Party, but I expect there are many Republican voters who nonetheless want their party to be in charge of the administration, and will vote for the Republican candidate, even if that candidate is as awful as Trump.

It is of course the case that the election will not be decided by people like me or that hypothetical Republican who values which party is forming the administration, but rather by people who are open to voting for the other party. Personally, I’d hope that people who might vote Republican can see how terrible the Republicans have become under the influence of Trump and his followers, and they might vote, if not so much for the Democratic Party, at least against Trumpism. But it is more likely voters will vote for or against Biden or Trump, rather than for a party.

If the Democratic Party were to undergo a transformation as macabre as what’s happened to the Republican Party in recent years, maybe I’d vote against them. I still can’t see voting for the Republicans, though.

I voted once for a Republican for a top office, William Weld for Governor of Massachusetts, against the conservative Democratic candidate John Silber. I don’t think I’d make the same choice now.

Remember “Sophie Molly”? From The Scotsman a few weeks ago:

parliamentary candidate for the Scottish Greens has defended calling JK Rowling a “torn-faced cow” on social media.

Sophie Molly, a trans woman who is standing in Gordon and Buchan at the general election, said she stood by the comment. Ms Rowling highlighted the insult after becoming embroiled in a row with Ms Molly on X over the weekend.

The Greens hopeful criticised a book the author has contributed to called The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, which includes essays from a range of women who have been critical of the impact of trans issues on women’s sex-based rights. It was co-edited by Susan Dalgety, a columnist for The Scotsman, and will be published on May 30.

That guy.

He didn’t do very well.

He did grab himself some fun on the way to losing though.

Sigh.

Nothing more than a bad night, eh? So we can be very sure it will never happen again? Even though it’s clearly been happening a lot, and getting worse? Even though we all know the arrow of time does not reverse course?

And then there’s the headline saying he stumbled over his words.

We’re doomed.

There’s nothing to worry about, it’s just that he gets exhausted and needs a lot of sleep.

Questions about Biden’s fitness for office and ability to seek a second term have swirled since his stunningly halting debate performance at last week’s CNN presidential debate.

CNN reported Thursday that Biden privately acknowledged to an ally earlier this week that the next stretch of days are critical as to whether he can save his reelection bid. The White House and campaign have insisted the president is not considering ending his campaign.

Asked about concerns about Biden’s age, top advisers have repeatedly and emphatically cited his aggressive schedules during international travel as examples of his vitality and capacity to do the job at 81.

The president’s new explanation this week that he performed badly at the debate this week because of the grueling foreign travel before the debate – despite having had nearly two weeks back in the states before facing off against Donald Trump – has undercut that argument.

Just a tad!

It will be fine, look how energetic he is, he dashes off to Europe and then comes back again, also he’s wiped and needs a lot of sleep and has to stop working no later than 8 p.m.

It will be fine!

All RIGHT.