I too keep wondering how Manchin can justify putting his personal political survival ahead of the planet.

Late in the evening on Friday 15 October an alert appeared on my phone that seemed at last to portend the end of the world. Two weeks before the UN climate summit in Glasgow – a make-or-break moment for American leadership and international ambition – Senator Joe Manchin had decided to gut our country’s best, and perhaps last, attempt to save itself. With three decades left to decarbonize the global economy, and a window of Democratic control unlikely to recur for years, Manchin’s benefactors in the coal and gas industry had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, killing the Clean Electricity Performance Program that would finally have brought their lucrative global arson spree under control.

…

My rage might consume me if I couldn’t set it down here: not only is Joe Manchin devastating the constituents he claims to work for, consigning them to a future of constant, devastating floods. Not only is he shilling for an industry that has ravaged his home state, snaring West Virginians in a resource trap. Not only is he making a choice that could single-handedly warm the planet by several tenths of a degree, precipitating millions of avoidable deaths and dimming the prospects of my entire generation.

The truly maddening thing is that he refuses to look his decision in the face, hiding instead behind the debunked and convenient lies furnished by his donors, who maintain that they can burn coal into mid-century without risking a catastrophe.

And the even more maddening thing is that he’s doing all this for his own petty self-interest. 7 billion people v one guy, and not even a guy with several more decades ahead of him (he’s 74). 7 billion people plus all the other life forms.

If fit for gander then fit for goose, yeah?

The International Handball Federation has responded to widespread accusations of sexism by changing its rules around women’s uniforms to allow bike shorts and tank tops instead of bikini bottoms and crop tops.

The sport’s global governing body has been the subject of international pressure since July, when the European Handball Federation made headlines for imposing a €1,500 fine on the Norwegian women’s beach handball team for wearing shorts like their male counterparts during the Euro 21 tournament in Bulgaria. At the time, the EHF described the shorts as “improper clothing”.

Yes because it’s “improper” for female athletes not to show off their tits and groins while competing.

At some point over the past month the IHF has quietly altered its regulations for beach handball, which now stipulate that “female athletes must wear short tight pants with a close fit”. Male athletes can still wear regular shorts as long as 10cm above the knee “if not too baggy”.

Jesus. Women are required to wear SHORT TIGHT PANTS WITH A CLOSE FIT while men can wear just regular shorts. How do they justify this in their own minds?

[Norway’s] minister for culture and sport, Abid Raja, described the ruling as being “completely ridiculous” and women’s sports associations across Europe also called for the resignation of the presidents of both the IHF and the EHF.

…

Even now, there are differences in terms of requirements for women to wear uniforms that are “body fit” and “tight” when there is no corresponding rule for men.

“Look, bitches, we want to ogle your bums and cracks, OKAY?”

Female athletes have spoken out against uniform double standards numerous times. Women are required to wear more revealing outfits in several sports, including track and field, beach volleyball and tennis.

Gymnastics and figure skating.

The children stamp out another artistic endeavor.

A forthcoming production of Into the Woods at The Old Vic was cancelled after staff expressed discomfort at Terry Gilliam’s involvement, reports claim.

The former Monty Python star had been due to direct a new production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical at the London theatre in April alongside Leah Hausman.

On Thursday (28 October), it was announced that the production would no longer be taking place, with no reason for the cancellation given.

However, The Stage now reports that The Old Vic pulled the production following unrest from members of staff who felt that Gilliam’s comments to the press regarding the #MeToo movement, trans rights and racism were at odds with the theatre’s ethos.

Well ideological purity is an obvious must for co-directing a play.

Sondheim is said to have initially approved the production after being impressed by Gilliam’s ideas for the production.

Oh well who cares what he thinks.

The Times picks up the Girl Guides-Ace story:

Girlguiding has been criticised for promoting asexuality awareness, causing some parents to threaten to withdraw their daughters from the group.

The organisation, which provides activities and regular meetings for girls aged five to 18, posted a tweet in support of Ace Week, an awareness event for asexuality, acknowledging all members and volunteers who identify as such.

But there is such a thing as “Ace Week” according to whom? Asexuality is a thing that requires an awareness week how, and according to whom? People “identify as such” according to whom? Is there a week for every kind of No Thank You there is? One for people who don’t like pickles? One for cinnamon, one for swimming, one for math, one for politics, one for lacrosse, one for zippers – you can see how quickly we would run out of weeks, can’t you.

It’s not at all clear that there even is such a thing as “asexuality” as a permanent condition aka an “identity.” There is more or less libido but – wait for it – it’s a spectrum not a binary. Isn’t it? And anyway even if there are some people who have Permanent Absolute Zero libido, how is that “an identity”? Why would it need “a week”?

Angela Salt, chief executive of Girlguiding, said: “A year ago we did a consultation with members asking how inclusive we were as an organisation. Our membership — made up of girls, parents, carers, volunteers and staff — told us that we haven’t got it right, and we needed to do more to become truly inclusive.”

“Inclusive” of what? Or whom? What does yattering about “asxuality” have to do with being more “inclusive”? By all means be more inclusive of girls from poor families, immigrant families, brown families, lesbian and gay families – but what does “asexuality” have to do with any of that? Not a single damn thing.

“In response, we launched our new diversity and inclusion strategic plan to make Girlguiding a place where everyone feels welcomed, like they belong and free to be themselves, whoever they are and wherever they are from.”

She must be joking. Tweeting about “Asexuality Week” will scare people off, not make them feel welcomed. Does she seriously think there are masses of girls out there feeling unwelcome at Girl Guides because those girls are “ace”?

When and why did the authorities hand the word “inclusive” over to Stonewall?

Now to cheer us up after the agony of a commenter who won’t reply to replies, dogs in Canada on their bus to school.

Housekeeping note.

I don’t have official rules. I think the tacit ones are obvious enough, in general. I guess however I need to state one rule, or not so much as a rule as a strong preference which, if flouted enough times, may lead to deletion of comments.

That rule or preference goes like this: we’re having a conversation here. That too is obvious enough, surely? We go back and forth. We exchange views. I like it that way, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

So thanks very much but I don’t want drive-by corrections by someone who never ever replies to replies to the corrections. If you won’t engage then I don’t want your corrections. That’s why I deleted Skeletor’s most recent correction. Conversation or don’t bother.

I don’t think that’s too harsh. I’ve told Skeletor more than once that I don’t like the drive-by no-replies unilateral approach, so please stop ignoring responses, but I’ve been ignored. Enough.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Your instructions.

Beth Clarkson #1 wrote:

Why are people so traumatized by misgendering?

I can grant that the transgender are indeed traumatized, but not that this is the natural outcome of Dysphoria, or of “feeling like your insides don’t match your outsides.” What might normally be expected when referred to as a “she” instead of “he” is a sense of sadness, or mild frustration. What occurs instead seems to be something akin to a panic attack, or perhaps the sort of outrage someone might feel encountering a bully kicking their grandmother.

That’s culture, I think. It’s a socially-induced reaction following a template of expectations, and in extreme forms close to what’s been called “social media induced psychosis” — “ a connection … between the gradual development and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, including delusions, anxiety, confusion and intensified use of computer communications.” It started percolating on corners of the internet like Tumblr and Deviant Art. Now it’s gone mainstream, through the schools, a kind of feedback loop between those who react to being misgendered (or the thought of being misgendered) and those who respond with concern (or the facsimile of concern.)

The more traumatized you are, the more obvious it is that you really, really are trans. Preferred pronouns may not be as validating as the unpreferred kind.

Haven’t we talked about this? Isn’t there some murmuring in certain quarters that Stonewall isn’t the boss of us? Aren’t there questions being asked about who made Stonewall God in charge of how Incloosiv everyone is?

Stonewall to judge NHS on LG inclusion:

NHS trusts will be judged by the controversial charity Stonewall on their LGBT “inclusion” in a £220,000 taxpayer-funded project.

The Telegraph has learnt that some 40 NHS trusts will be “benchmarked” on diversity after NHS England awarded the contract, titled NHS Rainbow Badges, to five LGBT groups.

Trusts will be given a bronze, silver or gold award depending on their ”inclusive cultures” and “trans status monitoring”, with assessors hired on a higher starting salary than nurses and paramedics.

Ah that’s an interesting detail. People who will be running around hospitals checking on how incloosiv they are will be paid more than the people who do the hard dangerous work.

Medics taking part are urged in official guidance to “pledge” via social media or a blog post “about how you will be an effective LGBT+ ally”, in order to “earn” a Pride flag pinned badge.

…

It comes as hospitals are to be given new guidance by the equalities regulator on preserving single-sex wards, after The Telegraph revealed some trusts said sex offenders who identified as women could be placed on female-only wards, and branded dissenters transphobic.

Stonewall says trans patients should be “admitted to wards and use facilities which match their gender” and says it is “completely inappropriate” to suggest trans patients pose a risk simply because they are trans.

But it’s not simply because they’re trans, as of course Stonewall knows. It’s because they’re men. Men can pose a risk to women.

As part of the new scheme, two “NHS Rainbow Badge Assessors” and a project manager have been hired, on between £28,900 and £30,000 per year, more than the starting salary for most nurses and paramedics.

It is understood the awards could expand to allow more NHS bodies to sign up, with health chiefs viewing this as a pilot project led by the equality charities Stonewall, LGBT Foundation, Switchboard, Consortium and Glaad.

An NHS spokesman said: “We know that some people are put off seeking care because of their sexuality, so this project is intended to help everyone feel able to come forward for help from the NHS.”

So now women will be put off seeking care because of their vulnerability to men. Brilliant.

The perils of being too friendly.

Biologist claims “yet again” that a man is not a woman. Scandalous!

Sums it up with great clarity.

2 / Either – – It’s OK if lesbians get assaulted. – OR: There is a priest class of human who uniquely amongst humans could never and would never abuse anyone (i.e. that those women are lying).

3/ – OR: The assaults did and do happen, but overall it is better to keep quiet for the sake of protecting a marginalised community. We’ve seen this before.

4/ When women and children reported abuse in the Catholic church, many felt that ‘christians don’t do that’, it was more important to not give the church a bad name etc. When rape was reported in the SWP those loyal to the party protected the party by blaming the victims.

5/ When abuse was first reported in Rotherham it was minimised, partly so as to not imply that Asian men would do that. People reporting a abuse by a Radio 1 DJ were also not initially believed etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.

6/ Well here is the thing: abuse can happen in all communities. For each community it probably WAS really painful to look the truth in the face, but look we must. Each time the cycle repeats we all say ‘oh how terrible, we must believe women’.

7/ then each new time there is either a silence or, as we have here, a backlash against the victims who speak out. Of course not all men. Not all catholics, not all trotskyists, not all Asian men in Rotherham, not all radio 1 DJs, and not all trans women. Of course. But some.

8/ This is NOTHING to do with anyone’s right to exist or human rights. Catholic rights are human rights, trotskyist rights are human rights, DJs rights are human rights, trans rights are human rights. Abusing women is not a human right. It is abuse.

9 / What happened to #MeToo? to #BelieveHer? Or does that not apply to lesbians? Does feminism not have to include lesbians because they are fair collateral damage? Or is a group of people so untouchable that they can never be accused of abuse or ill-doing?

10/ I can’t stomach the thought that anyone would throw these victims under the bus like the girls in Rotherham were, like the girls in the hospices were, like the children in the church were. #IStandWithLesbians.

Exactly.

A chat with Richard Dawkins:

His considerable reputation as an evolutionary biologist, atheist and intellectual was forged in the hot cauldron of public debate. With forceful clarity and occasional rattiness, he has for decades gone about slaughtering sacred cows like a bloodthirsty butcher. So if Dawkins is now afraid to speak his mind, I’m not sure where that leaves the rest of us. “I self-censor,” he admits. “More so in recent years.” Why? “It’s not a thing I’ve done throughout my life, I’ve always spoken my mind openly. But we’re now in a time when if you do speak your mind openly, you are at risk of being picked up and condemned.”

Well, we’re in a time where Twitter exists, as Dawkins knows. His speaking his mind openly doesn’t always come across well on Twitter. It can at times border on taunting, like when he kept referring to “clock boy.” (In case you’ve forgotten, a boy from a Muslim family made a clock of sorts for a school project and somebody thought “bomb!!” and things went crazy.) He did some borders-on-taunting of feminist women, starting with “Dear Muslima.” Things got heated. He never really seemed to get the point that his taunts (“speaking his mind openly”) at feminist women would trigger avalanches of abuse aimed at those women, because he’s a Name and has that power.

Dawkins is worried that the illiberalism of the left is helping to fuel right-wing populism, driving continued support to Donald Trump and the like. “Every time a lecturer is cancelled from an American university, that’s another God knows how many votes for Trump,” he says. He finds it particularly bothersome when his “own team” attacks him. “I’m much more hurt by attacks from the left,” he says. “When I get hate mail from my own people, that hurts in a way that getting it from creationists doesn’t.” It must have hit home then when Dawkins had his 1996 Humanist of the Year award withdrawn by the American Humanist Association (AHA) earlier this year.

The AHA bestows this prestigious annual award to an admired humanist: recipients have included Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie. It lists them all on its website, but if you scroll down to 1996, Dawkins’s name has been scrubbed. He’s gone. Why? Because of a tweet. Back in April, Dawkins caused offence when he wondered why identifying across racial barriers is so much more difficult than across sexual barriers. He wrote: “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP [The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

Unacceptable. Taunting feminist women, acceptable; questioning gender idenniny, unacceptable.

He recalls reading the historian Jan Morris’s 1974 book Conundrum on transitioning to become a woman. “She felt herself to be a woman trapped in a man’s body,” Dawkins says. “I think that’s a real phenomenon. I have sympathy. But when trans people insist that you say she is a woman, you redefine something. If you define a woman as a human with an XX karyotype, then she’s not a woman. If you define a woman as someone who identifies as a woman, feels they are a woman and has maybe had an operation, then by that definition she is a woman. From a scientific point of view, she’s not a woman. From a personal point of view, she is.”

To put it another way, you can change your gender but you can’t change your sex.

As a matter of “personal politeness” then, he’s happy to use whatever pronouns people ask him to use. “But I don’t like the idea that people can pillory someone like Jordan Peterson for refusing to be compelled to change his language,” he says. In this Dawkins senses something he doesn’t like: a quasi-religious faith that cannot be opposed. Or as he puts it: “Denying reality and it’s a heresy to do anything other than that.”

Quite.

Updating to add discussions here last April of the AHA rebuke of Dawkins and the [cough] strangeness of drawing the line there and not at clockboy or Dear Muslima.

April 19th

April 20th

GP by Sastra April 20th

April 20th

April 21st

“Socialist workers” forsooth. Trotsky would spurn them. Behold SWP response to letter from Woman’s Place UK.

Trans people are facing a barrage of attacks. 

No they’re not. Some people disagree with their belief system, and explain why; that’s not an attack, let alone a barrage of them.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) stands with the oppressed and unequivocally says, “Trans women are women,” and, “Trans men are men.” Trans people have the right to organise against their oppression and the right to protest against it. We stood in solidarity with the trans students and workers at the University of Sussex who were rightly outraged by Kathleen Stock’s views. 

They’re not oppressed though. Not believing wild claims about the self is not oppression. The students at Sussex were and are not “rightly outraged” by Stock’s views. (Any bets on whether the SWP knows a single thing about her views?) And what “workers” at Sussex had anything to do with the monstering of Stock? That word is obviously just thrown in so that the SWP can go on pretending to be an actual socialist party.

The attacks on trans rights are pushed by the Tories and the wider right—and go hand in hand with attacks on women’s rights. Our focus is fighting the right wing—and for a socialist society that uproots all oppression. 

Again: disagreement with fantasy-based claims about the self is not “attacks on trans rights.” Real socialists would find the whole idea laughably bourgeois and reactionary.

The BBC has internal networks of inquisitors.

It has that statue of Orwell with the now too familiar admonition: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Yes and no: people don’t want to hear “You’re ugly” and it’s not an important kind of liberty to say it. But that’s a quibble.

I’ve always felt that particular line stands for something important about the way journalism should be done.

I thought of it again last week, when a senior figure told me about ‘a climate of fear’ at the Corporation, surrounding stories on race and on transgender issues. A small but significant number of the BBC’s staff had appointed themselves would-be censors, he said.

…

But here at our national broadcaster I’ve been told about unacceptable demands to change or drop stories – demands made by members of two ‘internal staff networks’ which serve as support and discussion groups.

These are BBC Embrace, which represents Black, Asian and other ethnic minority staff, and BBC Pride, for LGBTQ staff. Delegates from these groups are accused of flinging around charges of ‘racism’ and ‘transphobia’. There are claims of ‘bullying, piling on and [using] threats of being cancelled’.

Note no mention of charges of homophobia or lesbophobia or misogyny. That’s all so last century.

Last week, BBC Online ran a brave and important story about lesbians feeling coerced into accepting trans women as sexual partners – feeling, in other words, that they had to have sex with someone who is biologically a man but identifies as a woman. The coverage included an interview with a lesbian named Jeannie who said she was attracted only to biological females. As a result, she had been labelled transphobic, a genital fetishist, a pervert and a ‘terf’ – a trans exclusionary radical feminist – for expressing this preference.

…

The piece repeated the claim, a contentious one of course, that lesbians are being pressured to ‘accept the idea that a penis can be a female sex organ’.

Thousands of people contacted the BBC to say they were glad to read about this difficult issue.

Yet I’m told the journalists behind the story had to ‘fight like hell’ to get it published. And that it was held up for several months because of internal opposition, with the campaign to censor it going all the way up to the BBC director-general.

…

Another investigation, about the influence of pro-trans lobby group Stonewall on publicly funded institutions, was also broadcast. Yet the journalist, Stephen Nolan, says he had been warned the subject of Stonewall was ‘untouchable’.

But he touched it.

Bossy little shits at another university order everyone to be more twanz-incloosivv more of the time.

Students and staff at Leeds University have called on their vice-chancellor and senior employees to include gender pronouns when introducing themselves in meetings.

I call on those students and staff to sit down and shut up.

They also said that the vice-chancellor, Simone Buitendijk, should state her preferred gender pronouns in her email signature. Both measures are designed to show support for the transgender community.

The university was accused of having “a deeply entrenched culture of transphobia” in a letter signed by LGBT staff and student groups, as well as by the Leeds branch of the University and College Union (UCU).

Because people don’t “state” “their” pronouns. The stupidity is becoming overpowering.

I remember when fervent social justice students talked about farm workers, strikes, wars, the CIA, nuclear weapons, ecology, capitalism, women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights, prisoners, voting rights, city planning – real issues. Now their children are throwing endless tantrums over fucking pronouns. It’s beyond pathetic.

Among the other demands, the letter called for “an effective and fit-for-purpose pronouns policy to be enacted, to include our VC showing her support for the trans community by using pronouns in her email signature, and a culture which encourages the sharing of pronouns when, for example, in meetings and seminars”.

The world is cooking like a dinner, despots are swallowing country after country, the number of homeless people keeps rising – and we’re being lectured on fucking pronouns.

A number of universities have introduced training and guidance on transgender issues. Edinburgh University lecturers have been given a list of “micro-insults” to avoid, such as “I wanted to be a boy when I was a child”, it was reported last week.

So we’re not even allowed to talk about our own childhood fantasies about being the other sex. How does that work? How do these young Stalinists know we’re not just as gendery as they are? Why does their kind count while our kind doesn’t?

Girl Guides? Really? Really?

What does this have to do with Girl Guides? (In the US called Girl Scouts.) Nothing nothing nothing nothing.

I suppose this nonsense is Stonewall yet again.

Yes that sounds like Stonewall all right. What does having no interest in sex have to do with making everyone feel welcome? What does having no interest in sex have to do with making everyone feel free to be themselves? What does having no interest in sex have to do with making everyone feel an equal sense of belonging? In the Girl Guides specifically?

The Beeb has a moronic article about it from last May. Has to be Stonewall.

Why are so many adults asleep at the fucking wheel?

Updating to add:

Just horrific.

Plotting the coup:

On 4 January, the conservative lawyer John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to meet Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Within 48 hours, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trump’s fate and removing him from the White House.

And Trump was hell-bent on stopping the certification, as if he had every right in the world to do that.

Eastman, who had a decades-long reputation as a prominent conservative law professor, had already prepared a two-page memo in which he had outlined an incendiary scenario under which Pence, presiding over the joint session of Congress that was to be convened on 6 January, effectively overrides the votes of millions of Americans in seven states that Biden had won, then “gavels President Trump as re-elected”.

Prominent law professor tells criminal in White House how to carry out a coup.

The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict “howls” of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the “ultimate arbiter” of the process, would then send the matter to the House of Representatives which, following an arcane rule that says that where no candidate has reached the necessary majority each state will have one vote, also decides to turn the world upside down and hand the election to the losing candidate, Donald Trump.

Aka steal the election.

Eastman told the Guardian that he told Trump and the gang that that wasn’t his favorite option for stealing the election.

Instead, Eastman pointed to one of the scenarios in the longer six-page memo that he had prepared – “war-gaming” alternatives. His favorite was that the vice-president could adjourn the joint session of Congress on 6 January and send the electoral college votes back to states that Trump claimed he had lost unfairly so their legislatures could have another go at rooting out the fraud and illegality the president had been railing about since election day.

Hmm yes and just keep doing that for the next four years, with Trump still squatting in the presidency until it all gets figured out. Cunning plan.

Eastman insisted to the Guardian that he had only been presenting scenarios to the vice-president, not advice. He said that since news of his memos broke he had become the victim of a “false narrative put out there to make it look as though Pence had been asked to do something egregiously unconstitutional, so he was made to look like a white knight coming in to stop this authoritarian Trump”.

Ah yes, Eastman is clearly the victim here.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a leading authority on US election issues, sees Eastman’s set of alternative scenarios as nothing less than a “fairly detailed roadmap for a constitutional coup d’état. That memo was a plan for a series of tricks to steal the presidency for Trump.”

…

Since the violent incidents of 6 January when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people, information has begun to amass about Trump’s extensive ploy to undo American democracy. Congressional investigations by the US House and Senate have added granular detail that has astonished even seasoned election-watchers in terms of the scale and complexity of the endeavour.

…

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written a report on 2020 election subversion, said that as time has passed the scope of Trump’s ambition has become clear. “There was much more behind the scenes than we knew about. We came much closer to a political and constitutional crisis than we realized,” he said.

Now they have three more years to plan the next one.

In the past few weeks, as congressional investigations have deepened, it has become clear that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result were much more extensive and multi-layered than his Twitter rages. “This wasn’t just some crazy tweets,” Waldman said. “There was a concerted effort to push at every level to find ways to cling to power, even though he had lost.”

You know, this is the downside to making a crooked real estate tycoon president. Trump is marinated in all the wrong skills for the job. He’s a cheat and liar and fraud, and that’s what he knows. He’s a conceited noisy self-promoter, and that’s what he knows. He knows nothing about democracy or norms or the law or history or government. He doesn’t give the tiniest fuck that he blew up all the norms surrounding how to govern and how to conduct elections. He’s a corrupt money-grubbing thief and bully and publicity hound, and that’s all there is to him.

Now here’s a guy who spells it all the way out, which they mostly avoid doing, probably because it shows too clearly how stupid the whole thing is.

Man tells woman that men who call themselves women are “far less powerful as a group” than women and men.

One, it’s a sly move to say “than you or I” as if women and men were on a level when it comes to power. Women and men are not in the same group when it comes to evaluating power, status, rights, freedoms, fairness, basic respect. Women don’t have the same power and status and rights and freedoms as men have.

Two, and most obviously, no of course men are not “far less powerful” than women. Even if they put on woman face and a skirt, they’re still not far less powerful than women.

Three, he cheats by making trans women one group and women and men another group. That’s connected to One but not exactly the same.

Four, it’s hard to think of a minority group lower down the pecking order? Really? Try African migrants trying to escape violence or poverty or drought or all three by piling into a tiny boat and heading for Spain. Try working class migrants in general. Try women in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan. Try Uighurs in China. Try schoolgirls held captive by Boko Haram. Try severely disabled people. Try people who combine two or more disadvantages of that kind. There are literally billions of people lower down the pecking order than trans people.

How do people get as soft in the head as this guy?

They had a plan.

On the night before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Washington Post reporter Robert Costa walked through the streets of D.C., surrounded by a throng of Trump supporters. He says he remembers a particular energy in the crowd that night.

…

Costa’s new book Peril, which he co-wrote with journalist Bob Woodward, centers on President Trump’s final days in office — specifically the events leading up to and following the Capitol siege.

As the crowd agitated outside, Costa says, inside a “war room” at the nearby Willard hotel, Trump lawyers and allies, including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, were laying out a strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In other words to carry out a coup.

According to Costa, Trump attorney John Eastman drafted a memo suggesting that an alternate slate of electors be used as a tactic to stop the certification of the election results.

“They were trying to get [Vice President] Pence and others to move the election to the House of Representatives to block Biden from taking office,” Costa explains.

Costa says that Pence declined to go along with the plan — mostly because there were no alternate slates of electors on hand. But, Costa adds, “Imagine if in January 2025, Republicans are much more organized and they have alternate slates of electors ready in many states. What happens then?”

I vote we don’t find out. I vote we prevent that.

The campaign released a statement on January 5th saying Pence agreed with their cunning plan.

It was a campaign statement on Trump campaign letterhead saying, in Donald Trump’s words, that Mike Pence fully agrees with me. The quote that stunned the Pence people was “Mike Pence is in total agreement that on Jan. 6, the election should be overturned and he should move it to the House.” It was issued on a formal statement.

This is where you start to see the crack in the American democratic system — when the vice president and president are not in sync, and the president starts to speak for other constitutional officers. This is where Pence and his team really go into a bunker mode and they don’t even share the letter Pence ultimately releases on Jan. 6, explaining his decision to not try to do anything crazy on Jan. 6. They don’t even share it with the White House counsel or with Trump. That was the level of tension between the president and the vice president.

So it may be that it was only Mike Pence who stood between those thieves and a successful coup. Next time there won’t be any Mike Pence.

I have left this question unasked for too long.

Why does Zuckerberg wear his hair like that?

Not ok.

Via Ex-Muslims of North America, who captioned it “Queer eye for the Islamic guy.”