Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on It’s not a gold star.

I think you’re all being really harsh here.

First, Biden just did an incredibly hard thing. Yes, it was the right thing to do, for his party and the country. Yes, you could say that he was morally obligated to do it. But there are a lot of things that people should do that are really hard to do on a personal level, and a lot of people fail that test. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for one.

Joe Biden spent decades of his life dreaming of being president one day. He gets there, and does a good job, and now he’s being asked to do something that no incumbent president has done since LBJ? And unlike LBJ, who had a mixed record as president — many great accomplishments, but also the escalation in Vietnam — Biden’s actual record as president is quite good and he doesn’t get enough credit for it. It probably doesn’t seem fair to him, and you know what, it probably isn’t in some sense. It wasn’t fair that his first wife and his daughter died in a car crash and he was a single father as a young senator. It wasn’t fair that his son Beau died young. I’ll leave out Hunter because we can argue what responsibility Joe has for how he turned out, but suffice it to say he’s had his share of personal tragedy.

And now you all want to begrudge him a bit of pride in a gracious speech confirming a pretty grand gesture of statemanship? It just strikes me as so, so petty.

Second, bragging about his record and how ordinarily that would merit a second term isn’t just personal pride. Joe Biden bragging about his record is good for Kamala Harris, and therefore the Democratic Party and the country. Harris is going to spend this campaign bragging about Biden’s presidency and running on his record.

Sigh. This is just dense. Thick. Dumb. Uncomprehending. Point-missing. Reality-ignoring.

Biden says:

President Joe Biden on Wednesday said abandoning his reelection campaign and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic candidate was the best way to unite the country and save democracy, despite his ambition to win a second term.

Biden’s announcement to end his presidential bid on Sunday followed a disastrous June debate with Donald Trump, which exacerbated questions about his ability to defeat the Republican candidate, or to serve another four years if he succeeded.

In his address to the nation from the Oval Office, the 81-year-old president said he believed he deserved to be reelected based on his record during his first term.

!!!

Dude. The whole problem is that you are progressively losing your faculties. It’s a time thing. Your first term is wholly beside the point because it’s over, and time is continuing to pass, and you’re not as sharp as you were four years ago, or three, or two, or one. I’m sorry to say that but it’s true. It can happen to anyone. First term was then and this is now. It’s not about what you “deserve”; it’s about what everyone needs.

The vanity is not attractive. Sorry.

A drag queen and another man do the Olympics torch thing, and now this.

Women don’t exist or if they do exist they don’t matter, and by the way, if they’re running for high office be sure to tell them how to dress.

A piece of advice. Don’t go for a hike in extremely hot weather. If you do, take as much water as you can carry and don’t go far. If you don’t take much water and you do go far…well, you won’t come back.

A 56-year-old woman died while hiking near a state park in southwestern Utah over the weekend after running out of water on a sweltering day, police said.

Emergency crews responded near Quail Creek State Park on Sunday to a report of a hiker “in distress due to not having enough water and the temperature being 106 degrees,” the Hurricane City Police Department said in a statement.

Too hot. If you don’t have enough water, turn back after 10 minutes.

Three hikers died in state and national parks in Utah over the previous weekend, including a father and daughter from Wisconsin who got lost on a strenuous hike in Canyonlands National Park in triple-digit temperatures.

Don’t do strenuous hikes in triple-digit temperatures.

Use your brain.

Prosecutor v felon:

Vice President Harris vowed to reprise her role as a prosecutor on the campaign trail while running against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee and a convicted felon.

Those are all one person. Clumsy writing makes it look as if Harris is running against three people, but no, Trump is the nominee and the convicted felon.

Harris, too, quickly pivoted to the kind of rhetoric she said to expect from her on the campaign trail — that of a seasoned attorney, who before she was elected as vice president and a United States senator from California served as that state’s elected attorney general and before that, a courtroom prosecutor.

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said.

Hardened criminal v experienced prosecutor. I’m getting more optimistic.

Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., seen as a potential contender, told MSNBC Monday morning that he was endorsing her candidacy. “The vice president is smart and strong which will make her a good president,” he said.

Fellow Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania also quickly endorsed Harris, eliminating speculation that they might try to challenge her at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in four weeks.

…

While some Democrats are advocating for an “open process” in Chicago, there seems to be little appetite for a contentious battle for the nomination to take on former President Donald Trump, and any potential challenge seemed likely to be nominal.

Also good.

Could it be that the nightmare will end?

Goddy terrorism in the news:

The Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary has been found guilty of directing the terrorist group al-Muhajiroun (ALM) and drumming up cross-border support for the banned organisation online.

After a trial at Woolwich crown court in south London, Choudary was convicted of having a “caretaker role” in directing ALM.

Choudary came as close to becoming a household name as an extremist can get in the UK through his media appearances and controversial actions such as protesting at UK soldiers’ funerals. Security experts have claimed Choudary influenced dozens of British jihadists.

But the trained solicitor’s apparent ability to act just within the bounds of the law ended in 2016 when he was convicted of supporting Islamic State and he served half of a six-month prison sentence before being released on licence.

Well if you believe in a terrorist god you’re bound to think terrorism is goddy and thus mandatory.

Two men.

Zero women.

Women erased again.

Women barely exist. Women are at home mopping the floor. Women are passive blobs who don’t do anything. Men are the people who matter; women are the machines for making more men.

Oh good, the struggling royals get to have more money. That’s a relief.

The monarchy is to get an extra £45m due to soaring profits from the Crown Estate. The income boost comes from a surge in profits from the estate, due to six new offshore wind farms.

Profits from the Crown Estate have increased to £1.1bn, which in turn will lead to a rise in the Sovereign Grant, which pays for the Royal Family’s running costs. The grant will rise from £86.3m in 2024/25 to to £132m in 2025/2026 – which will help pay for the last stages of renovating Buckingham Palace, officials said.

How lovely for them. Might be able to afford an occasional night out, as well.

The annual accounts – delayed for a month because of the general election – revealed the household would get two new helicopters over the coming year, to replace existing 15-year-old aircraft. The report said they were “a key component” in enabling the King and wider Royal Family to carry out engagements, allowing them to get to remote regions of the UK.

Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic, said: “We do not owe the royals a living, we do not owe them palatial homes, private helicopter travel or lives of leisure and luxury.” Mr Smith added: “They abuse the taxpayer’s trust day in, day out, taking our money to spend on their own private lifestyles.”

Yes but it brings the tourists in.

Drat.

“DOES in fact generate legal liability for Stonewall. This is a hollow victory for them.”

Drat.

Use your damn brain, will you?

Biologically male competitors should be allowed to take part alongside women, says Labour’s Lisa Nandy

Of course they shouldn’t, because they have physical advantages. It’s not fair to women to let men invade their sports. Don’t be unfair to women. Don’t be stupid. Don’t fall for the manipulation and bullying. Act like a grownup.

Lisa Nandy said it should be up to individual sports to decide whether to let biological males compete against women in their respective fields, arguing “most” sports had got the balance right.

Balance shmalance! What balance?! Never mind balance, just don’t let men ruin women’s sports. It’s not that complicated.

I don’t know who made this, but good job whoever you are.

Via Gnu Atheism

Dude longs to punish women for not wanting him in their sports.

The [male] transgender athlete said “My dreams were taken away from me once again, so I plan on going back to New England, hitting up all the indoor competitions, and taking all the names, all the records, and everything.”

Taking them from women, he means. Punishing women for not wanting him to trash their sport, by trashing their sport. What a nice reasonable not at all misogynist man.

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on A national emergency.

Remind me again of the number of abusers and murderers of UK women who were/are UK Police.

Unfortunately, here in the Great Land Downunder, we don’t fare much better. Male violence against women and girls is rising and too much leniency is still shown.

Narsen Moffat, 31, was jailed for three years for several brutal attacks on unsuspecting people, including one where he told a female employee he wasn’t afraid to hit a woman.

During sentencing on Thursday, the Adelaide Magistrates Court heard Moffat collected Irene McHugh from her home in April 2023.

Moffat then punched her multiple times to the head before locking the car doors.

“She pleaded with you to let her go so she could return to her children but you kept punching her, telling her she would never see her kids again,” Magistrate Lynette Duncan said.

Irene McHugh isn’t Moffat’s only victim, just the one unlucky enough to have a near death experience at his hands. In addition, he threatened other women during robberies, assaulted a male pedestrian, stole cars, drove dangerously and had an extensive criminal history of assault and theft charges, including previously being jailed for punching a man after he didn’t like the advice he gave him in the courthouse.

So, here are three cheers to him spending 20 years locked up. Oh, wait.

Ms Duncan sentenced Moffat to three years and 29 days jail, with a non-parole period of two years.

The sentence was backdated to May 6.

Men take top three prizes in women’s race:

Transgender athletes swept the board in a 1-2-3 at a prestigious women’s cycle race over the weekend, infuriating fans and leaving female competitors in the shade.

Male transgender athletes that is. I wish journalism would learn to be clear about this, because confusion is one of the ways trans ideology has managed to steal so much from women already.

Every medalist in the elite women’s Madison at Washington’s Marymore Grand Prix on Friday had a trans athlete on the two–person team, marking the first time trans women are known to have had a place on every podium spot in a race.

Race venue the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome in Redmond warns it will not tolerate ‘bullying or derogatory comments especially related to race, creed, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, physical or mental disability’.

It’s Marymoor, not Marymore. It’s one of my favorite parks – the one where you can walk along Samammish Slough all the way to where it empties into Lake Washington. Takes a few buses to get there, but worth it.

Anyway, nice to know the velodrome will tolerate the bullying of female athletes but not the mentioning of male athletes doing the bullying.

Trump calls Harris what now?

Vice President Kamala Harris framed her likely upcoming fight against Donald Trump as one between a prosecutor and a criminal — describing, from her new campaign headquarters Monday, her experience taking on “predators,” “fraudsters” and “cheaters.”

Trump around the same time, meanwhile, took to Truth Social to call Harris “Dumb as a Rock.”

Hmm. I’d have thought the rockish quality would be more with Trump. Granted he has plenty of feral cunning, but he’s not overall intelligent in the way Harris is.

Trump, who during a rally in Michigan Saturday night called Harris “crazy,” “nuts,” and “Laughing Kamala,” is likely to turn to ad hominem attacks against her, while Harris is expected to lean into her experience as a prosecutor — and Trump’s status as a felon with wide-ranging legal problems.

Which kind of sums up their different levels and types of intelligence all by itself. Trump is good at insults, Harris is good at substance.

Speaking to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday, Harris distilled her case against Trump.

“I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Quite an intelligent thing to say.

Aw, sad, Trump is having second thoughts about picking the dangerous crazy guy.

Much of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, including the decision to tap Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, was structured around attacks on President Joe Biden. But then Biden announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the presidential race altogether.

Haha! Fakeout!

Trump campaign officials acknowledged that Trump selected the inexperienced Vance, charged with all his techno-authoritarian ideas, to boost support among their own base, not extend a hand to swing voters, according to The Atlantic. Vance was a symbol of the Trump team’s assuredness that they would win in 2024. Come Sunday, that assuredness appears to be shrinking.

“Most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second-guessing of JD Vance—a selection, they acknowledged, that was [born] of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter,” Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta, who had written the piece about the panicking Trump campaign, posted on Twitter.

Anything about who would be best for the country? Hahahahaha of course not, don’t be stupid.

Trump decried Biden’s decision to drop out in a post on Truth Social, writing that his team would have to “start all over again” and asking to be reimbursed for the cost.

Interesting. I wonder just how long the list is of people who would like to be reimbursed by Trump, like for instance the many contractors he stiffed.

Violence against women a ‘national emergency’ in England and Wales, police say

Two million women are estimated to be victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”, police chiefs have warned.

Crimes including stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence affect one in 12 women in England and Wales, with the number of recorded offences growing by 37% in the past five years and the perpetrators getting younger.

Really? Oh well, never mind. Now let’s talk about the persecution of our trans sisters.

The NPCC report, which analysed official data, said:

•  One in six homicides in England and Wales are linked to domestic abuse, or 100 out of the 590 homicides in the year to March 2023.
•  20% of all police-recorded crimes – more than 1m offences a year – count as VAWG. These include sexual assault, stalking, harassment, domestic violence, and controlling and coercive behaviour. The true total is estimated in the report to be twice as high.
•  Recorded cases of VAWG increased by 37% between 2018 and 2023, now running at 3,000 offences a day.
•  Perpetrators are getting younger, dashing hopes that violence against women may reduce markedly as time passes.

Things have become much worse for women and girls over the past five years. I wonder why. I wonder if it could be partly because of the obsessive attention paid to men who pretend to be women, and/or the flagrant loathing and contempt directed at women who refuse to pretend that men can be women.

The Guardian talks about Andrew Tate-style “influencers” but says nothing about the bullying and abuse of women by the trans communinny and its fans.

Seen in journalism explains this new thing where the BBC puts men pretending to be women in the center of stories that aren’t specific to women or trans-everything.

And the Beeb, rather shockingly, takes them up on it.

So that explains “Emma” Harris who can’t buy a house in the Midlands despite a nice salary, the one with the nice photo and lots to say, that the BBC never identified as a man or even as trans. “Emma” was just “Emma” and the BBC went on its way rejoicing.

NPR wants women to conceal their slutty hair.

When the 2024 Olympics start this week, France won’t allow its athletes to wear headscarves during the games – seemingly in contrast with the Olympic charter’s calls for respect of religion and protection of human rights.

Rules about what competitors can wear are secular and impartial. Religion is simply beside the point.

A recent report from Amnesty International calls France’s restrictions on religious attire blatant discrimination and a researcher for the human rights nonprofit told NPR’s Morning Edition that, beyond being unfair, the move could cause systemic issues for women athletes in France.

The bans have a wider impact on women in sports, dashing the hopes of female athletes in France, said Anna Błuś, a researcher for Amnesty International. Amateur soccer, basketball and volleyball leagues also don’t permit women to wear hijabs during play.

Because the rules have to be the same for everyone.

The International Olympic Committee said in a statement to NPR that the host country considers athletes representing it as civil servants.

“This means that they must respect the principles of secularism and neutrality, which, according to French law, means prohibition from wearing outwardly religious symbols, including the hijab, veil and headscarf when they are acting in their official capacity and on official occasions as members of the French national team,” the statement read. “The same secular approach also applies, for instance, to civil servants and teachers.”

What I’m saying. The games are secular – that means neutral. NPR is siding with theocracy. Don’t be like NPR.

Normally, I think I wouldn’t be very keen on a prosecutor as the Dem candidate. They’re necessary of course, but the whole law & order lock ’em up crack down on the hoodlums thing tends to be vindictive right-wing racist dog-whistling. Normally. But given Trump’s flagrant criminality and hostility to all norms that don’t favor him, having a prosecutor up against him seems oddly reassuring.

Now that Biden has stepped aside — and with even more of her potential opponents planning to endorse her by the end of the day Monday — over a dozen advisers and close allies told CNN they think her candidacy will lean heavily on her background as a district attorney, attorney general and cross examiner in Senate hearings.

It is simple, they say: prosecutor versus felon.

And shameless felon at that. Brazen, determined, lifelong, ruthless felon.

“As a former prosecutor, Vice President Harris has a lot of experience holding convicted felons accountable,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former primary opponent in the 2020 Democratic race who quickly endorsed Harris after the news of Biden’s decision broke. “She was fighting on behalf of abused women. She was in the trenches against giant banks. She was out in the middle of multiple fights every day as a prosecutor and then attorney general in California.”

Warren noted that she first met Harris before either got to the Senate, when she was then setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the then-California attorney general was taking on big banks over the mortgage crisis.

“It’s such a beautiful juxtaposition,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “Her whole career she’s been taking on tough cases and tough characters like Donald Trump. Her reputation has grown from her success in putting bad guys away. And now she has the chance to put the ultimate bad guy away for good.”

Well when you put it that way…