The Times on how we got here:

In April 2019, Mr. Biden embarked on his third, and given his age, almost certainly his last, bid for the White House. After Mr. Obama’s two terms and Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, many younger Democrats, the energetic grass roots of the party, were hungering for new talent.

Mr. Biden appeared to struggle on debate stages crowded with more progressive rivals, such as Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as younger and more engaging competitors, such as Mr. Buttigieg, then the mayor of South Bend, Ind., Ms. Harris and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey among them. He finished poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But he caught fire after his win in South Carolina, and his lead solidified as the Covid-19 pandemic raised his stock for Democrats looking for a more experienced hand to not only take the battle to Mr. Trump but also to guide the country through a crisis.

…

Mr. Biden’s surge to the nomination was an affirmation that emboldened him and the people around him, and it reinforced an instinct to ignore his critics and doubters. “You all declare me,” he told The New York Times editorial board in 2020, fumbling for words before finishing his thought: “declare me dead, and guess what, I ain’t dead, and I’m not going to die.”

Ah. There’s your mistake right there. Yes you are.

He’s carrying on as if aging were not a thing, but it is a thing, just as death is. This road goes only one way. Aging is a thing, and it does alter the body and the brain. Biden at this point is not aging well. He’s a lot more fragile than Trump, and that all by itself is disastrous. Trump still has energy, and a loud voice, and aggression to spare, and a fake tan. Biden looks corpse-like next to him.

We’re toast.

Oh ffs.

We need to debate this with a bit more compassion, he says.

Yes but can a woman have a penis?

Listen, he says, I’ve made it really clear, he says, the vast majority of people will have the same gender as their biological sex but a small number won’t, he says.

So a woman can have a penis? the host says. Wull, quite clearly, SIR Ed Davies says, with a touch of contempt.

Supreme Court says yes sure a president is above the law, no problem.

The Supreme Court’s liberal bloc issued blistering dissents in the Trump immunity ruling, arguing that the decision “reshapes the institution of the presidency” and “makes a mockery” of the constitutional principle that no man is above the law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reading her dissent from the bench, said that “relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom … the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

Generosity is a virtue.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on ideological lines that former President Donald Trump has immunity for some of his conduct as president but not unofficial acts in the federal election interference case. The court did not determine what constitutes an “official” act in this case, leaving that to the lower court. The decision adds another hurdle and further delay to special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of the former president.

Which, by pure coincidence, means he won’t be prosecuted before the election, which no doubt he will win.

It’s scary shit.

Oh go to hell all of you – the police the BBC all of you.

Transgender woman guilty of rape after night out

Man. Man man man man man. Women don’t rape; women can’t rape. Women are the targets of rape, not the perps.

A transgender woman has been found guilty of rape following a night out. Lexi Secker, 35, of Lowbourne, near Melksham, was living as a man when she attacked a woman in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, on 23 April 2023.

Don’t be so ridiculous. The man wasn’t “living as a man”; the man was a man.

Swindon Crown Court was told Secker would be tried as a woman and she was found guilty of one count of rape on Friday, following a four day trial.

What does that mean? Who told Swindon Crown Court that?

And why? Why was a rapist “tried as a woman”? Women can’t rape. Only men can rape.

Det Con Corrina Wiltshire, from Wiltshire Police, said: “I would firstly like to thank our victim in this case who has been inspirational in the way they have handled things.”

They? They?? Why they? She’s a woman; even the Beeb said she’s a woman. Why “they”?

Why does the man get “she” while the woman he raped gets “they”? Why the determination to insult and erase and taunt women in every way possible?

She said the case had taken a long time to come before a judge and commended the victim for their commitment to getting justice, “despite the hurdles”.

“They have such incredible strength and I hope it shows others that they can do this too,” she added.

Which? Which they? Hope it shows others who can do this too? And why does Det Con Corrina Wiltshire, from Wiltshire Police, get to be a she when the victim doesn’t?

So the important thing is Biden and his career and his everything – when it should be everyone else.

President Joe Biden waged an intense weekend battle to save his reelection bid following his disastrous debate performance but has been unable to dismiss existential questions about his candidacy that are more glaring than ever.

But maybe just maybe the important thing isn’t his career but the cliff we’re racing towards.

The Democratic damage control strategy of arguing that one bad night does not detract from Biden’s past successes ignores the critical question with which many voters have wrestled for months: Is Biden simply too physically and cognitively diminished to serve another four years?

That’ll be because the arrow of time moves in only one direction. His past successes are irrelevant if he’s crumbling now.

Since Biden is the presumptive nominee after dominating Democratic primaries, there’s no realistic way for the party to move on unless the president decides it’s time. Some party leaders fear a new nominating contest at this point would run the risk of setting off an internal civil war that could effectively hand Trump the presidency.

And letting Biden go ahead won’t?

I saw this guy’s (disgusting) tweet this morning, but I didn’t realize he’s a PR honcho for the police.

The eight nurses who don’t want to undress in front of a man are the bad people here, for “humiliating” him. He’s not the bad guy for humiliating them, no, they’re the bad people for trying to make him stop humiliating them. And yet here we are.

PR honcho for the police.

I’m so pleased to find out at last what asexuality looks like.

Yeah good luck with that “damage control” thing.

With countless calls and a rush of campaign events, the president’s team began a damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors.

But pressure and pleading aren’t going to turn back the clock. They’re not going to make Biden any younger or sharper or more robust.

Later on Friday, top White House aides worked the phones, with Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, calling the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to check in, according to a person familiar with the call. And by the afternoon, the Biden campaign had transformed its weekly all-staff call into a virtual pep talk to dispel any doubts creeping into the campaign offices in Wilmington, Del., and beyond.

Well they should stop doing that. This is like racing toward the middle of a bridge that has just broken in half.

This isn’t a damn football game or sheep-shearing contest. This is whether we do or do not have Donald Trump destroying everything for another four years. Everybody needs to put ego aside and focus.

But they won’t, I suppose. Maybe they can’t. Maybe it just isn’t possible.

The 48 hours after the debate were a frenzied campaign within a campaign to save Mr. Biden’s suddenly teetering candidacy, a multiday damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors to stand by the president, the party’s presumptive nominee.

But they shouldn’t. The grim reality is that age hasn’t slowed Trump down but it definitely has slowed Biden down, and everyone can see that, and it’s not going to work out well.

I have no idea how they could go about swapping someone else for Biden, but if they don’t, we’re on the slide into hell.

Yet again, for the umpty-billionth time, a smug man reveals how entirely indifferent he is to women and their need for safety from predatory men.

Gee yes how dare women object to being forced to take their clothes off in front of men? Who do they think they are, real people???

The Telegraph did a little stir the pot story on an academic article accusing Dolly Parton of all the phobias because of her project to send books to children who need them.

Dolly Parton has been accused of “white saviourism” for giving millions of free books to poor children.

The reading scheme, called Imagination Library, was launched by the country and western star in the US more than three decades ago. It now operates in the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia, and has been lauded for helping to drive up literacy rates.

It gives disadvantaged pupils the same access to books as their middle-class peers by sending high-quality titles directly to the homes of under-fives.

That’s already a very over-simplified claim. No it doesn’t. That would be pretty much impossible for a small operation of this kind. It gives disadvantaged kids books that they wouldn’t have without this project, but that’s not the same access as middle-class peers, which is open-ended.

But according to a recently published academic paper, the award-winning scheme is racist by reinforcing notions of “white privilege and heteronormativity” and not representing enough cultural diversity, disability, trans and bisexual gender identities and non-traditional family structures.

The academic paper, by speech and language pathologist Jennifer Stone, published by the University of North Carolina, asserts that Dolly Parton’s philanthropy is “potentially dangerous” and smacks of “white savourism”.

Through its focus on “reading to succeed” and “perfecting parenting”, Parton’s Imagination Library scheme is “oppressive”, says Stone. Such themes subjugate children and “privilege a White, middle-class, cis-gendered, heteronormative, able-bodied norm,” it adds.

That all sounds very annoying, but is the Telegraph painting an accurate picture? Following that description it gives us a list of people expressing outrage, but it’s a little too obvious that the Telegraph prodded the list of people to go “Outrage!!!” at this thing the Telegraph was showing them. It’s a good deal too formulaic, so I sought more information. A child development institute at the University of North Carolina wrote a piece on Stone’s paper a few weeks ago. I daresay someone showed the piece to someone at the Telegraph and here we are. Let’s see what it says.

For her doctoral dissertation, “Reading Power With and Through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library: A Critical Content Analysis,” Jennifer Stone, MS, CCC-SLP, examined the 60 books provided by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) to the children who entered kindergarten in 2022. Established in 1995, DPIL is a book gifting program that mails free books to children in participating areas from birth until age five.

Millions of children nationwide received the books. Today the program is publicly funded for all children in 21 states. Given the wide reach of the program—which is expected to continue expanding—Stone undertook this research because of her desire to understand how the discourses of race, gender, class, ability, and literacy are represented in books that are distributed to an entire community.

Let’s be real: that’s not an absurd thing to do. There’s always discussion and controversy about what books children are reading and what’s being taught in schools.

She discovered that DPIL—which she says is evidence-oriented and interested in best practices—chooses books that do a good job of including frequent representations of racial diversity, with inclusive pictures and illustrations. However, there is less authentic representation of authors and illustrators, with mostly white illustrators and authors creating stories about children of color. All the books perpetuate gender norms and heteronormative relationships. Similarly, the distributed books lack diverse family structure relationships and focus on the middle class. Additionally, characters’ families in books rarely engage in the family reading practice the books are intended to promote.

This spring, Stone shared her findings with the leadership at the Dollywood Foundation, which runs the library. She noted that the books often conflate race and gender; the five families in the books who do not live in single-family homes are all families of color. Some of their apartments are depicted as places from which children needed to or wanted to escape. The books do not represent diversity of ability, since all the characters are portrayed as fit and able. Stone says that while her research was well received, she does not know if it will impact the book selection process.

That’s nowhere near as fatuous as what the Telegraph described.

I grabbed a bus way the hell north and east from here to a huge mostly wildish park on Lake Washington. Saw people playing cricket. Walked through big meadows full of long grass to the lake, and promptly turned back to the meadows because the area along the lake was full of people with picnics and so on. No problem, I can visit the lake in the cooler months and/or on rainy days. Crossed the road that traverses the park and went a few yards into a meadow and encountered

…a coyote.

Just the one, fortunately. It gazed at me calmly and then turned and trotted away.

I’ve encountered coyotes quite a few times lately – generally just running or walking down or across a street in the neighborhood. Single coyotes. Encountering one in a huge grassy meadow with no humans in sight or nearby is a tad different. What if one day it’s not one but five or eight or ten?

I hope I don’t find out.

I did once encounter a pack, when out for a walk with a dog friend long after dark. That was extremely unnerving. They…let’s say…accompanied us as we headed home.

We are so screwed.

Biden’s poor performance sent leading Democrats into a panic on Thursday night, after the US president appeared shaky and at points struggled to finish sentences. It amplified fears about his age and fitness for office that it had been hoped the debate would allay.

It seems kind of stupid and reality-denying to hope that given the realities. What’s he going to do, rip off his shirt to reveal the Superman leotard underneath?

The former US president Barack Obama defended Biden in a social media post on Friday. “Bad debate nights happen,” he said. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

Yes but there are other people who have fought for ordinary folks their entire lives and are not as fragile and fumbling as Biden is now.

In a campaign stop in North Carolina on Friday, Biden appeared far more energised and coherent. He acknowledged his widely panned debate performance.

“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”

Oh ffs. Those are skills you need in order to do the job, and for that matter to get the job. You can’t be telling us you’ve lost them but you’re still the right guy to defeat Donald Fucking Trump.

We’re doomed.

Does Angela Rayner answer the question?

She does not.

She says many words but she does not answer the question.

There was a Pride march in Toronto yesterday. Apparently one theme was “transphobe extermination.”

Capitalism must be set free:

Friday’s ruling that overturned an important 1984 ruling called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council was a belated victory for Trump’s deregulatory agenda, with all three of his appointees to the high court joining the 6-3 conservative majority.

“The decision was the culmination of a decadelong, billionaire-funded campaign to capture and weaponize the unelected power of the Supreme Court to deliver huge windfalls for corporate interests at the expense of everyday Americans,” said Alex Aronson, a former Democratic staffer in Congress who is executive director of Court Accountability, a judicial oversight group.

…

Overturning Chevron, a ruling that business interests long disliked, has long been a goal of conservative lawyers, who saw it as giving bureaucrats too much power.

The original decision said courts should defer to federal agencies in interpreting laws that were ambiguous, but in Friday’s ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts said that approach was “fundamentally misguided.”

Naturally. The filter must always be profit. Federal agencies don’t profit from the businesses being regulated, so how can they possibly judge fairly? Only those who have a financial motive can interpret the laws correctly.

Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, memorably said in 2018 at a conservative political conference that the president’s judicial selections and the attempt to roll back regulations “are really the flip side of the same coin.”

Well no shit. They’re the same coin and that coin is the coin that matters: make sure that a small minority can pile up the billions and to hell with everything else.

On another deregulatory issue, the Supreme Court in the coming days could act on a petition filed by McGahn and his Jones Day colleagues that seeks to gut the power of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to set workplace safety rules.

Naturally. Workplace safety rules are for the schmucks who have to work for a living, while gutting them makes the rich richer.

Hahahahahahahaha

Ok I can’t parody it either but I can ask –

If she’s asexual why is she dressed that way and standing that way and glaring that way?

Are we supposed to think none of that is sexual at all in any way?

Come onnnnnnnnnnnn.

Originally a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany Room.

A strange side effect of SPLC calling legitimate organizations hate groups is that it has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People or groups who have been wrongly smeared as agents of “hate” are liable to turn sour on any suggestion that anyone is hateful, and they might start drifting towards hardline, far-right positions, as a social effect of being ostracized by liberals and embraced by fellow-exiles, many of whom are, in fact, far-right, hateful extremists who were exiled from liberal society’s good standing for entirely legitimate reasons.

No one who’s been cast into the “hate” pile believes they deserve to be there. Everyone who’s been labelled hateful vehemently denies the charge. Everyone. Even the genuine bigots and quacks. And they all resent liberal society for discrediting them.

In the case of critics of gender ideology who’ve been “wrongly” labelled “hateful”, rather than objecting to having been mistakenly put in the hate pile, they sometimes decide to throw the whole category away, to cast distrust upon the whole edifice of disrepute accrued by legitimate hate groups. When you’re an exile, there’s a good chance you’ll end up rubbing shoulders with fellow exiles, many of whom are genuinely hateful wackadoos. And there’s a good chance your values will start to bleed into each other. Because we’re social animals and that’s just naturally what happens.

I’m watching this exact dynamic play out in real time: people and orgs in the “gender critical” camp are interacting more and more with far-right extremists, and their values are shifting as a result. As a gay rights advocate, it deeply concerns me. Support for the full gamut of gay rights (workplace and housing protections; freedom to partner with whom we choose without penalty; freedom to start families of our own without facing discrimination; freedom from abusive pseudoscience like “conversion therapy”) is eroding before my eyes in GC circles.

That’s why it’s so dangerous for the supposed arbiters of hate, groups like SPLC who peddle their little lists, to become corrupted, and why they’re such easy targets for corrupting influences with special-interest agendas.

The truth is, we’re social animals, and there’s a real need to socially reinforce that some groups are disreputable and should be ostracized from decent society. (I find myself tempted to cite SPLC sometimes when I’m trying to point out that some groups are hate groups, and I have to stop myself from doing so, and find other means to easily and quickly convey that a group trying to get back into society’s good graces is terrible and shouldn’t be given a pass.)

But all kinds of special interest groups want the ability to put their personal enemies on the hate list, to advance their own agendas. With the unwitting help of the SPLC, Muslim extremists did it to moderate, liberal Muslim advocates. And now gender extremists are doing it to us.

And the side effect of that is that the separation between reputable sources and disreputable ones — between truth and fiction, ultimately — starts to collapse.

A win for girls for a change:

Last week, Sierra Leone’s parliament enacted landmark legislation to ban child marriage. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Bill 2024, which makes marriage for anyone under 18 a criminal offense, seeks to protect girls from a harmful practice that has long violated their rights and hindered their development.

Child marriage is a serious problem in Sierra Leone, where 30 percent of girls and 4 percent of boys are married before age 18, with even higher rates in rural areas. Around 800,000 girls are currently married in Sierra Leone, half before turning 15.

Jeezus. 400 thousand girls married before turning 15.

Child marriages fuel the high adolescent pregnancy rate in Sierra Leone where, tragically, pregnancy complications are the leading cause of death for girls aged 15-19.

The new law prohibits all forms of child marriage and cohabitation with a child, including aiding and abetting, protects the best interests of children, and ensures affected girls have access to counseling and safeguarding. The law amends existing legislation, including the Child Rights and Registration of Customary Marriage Acts, to harmonize the legal framework on marriage and break the cycle of early marriage and its devastating consequences.

The law also builds on Sierra Leone’s efforts to protect young girls from marriage and tackle barriers to girls’ education. A new education law, adopted in 2023, guarantees children 13 years of free education, including one year of preprimary education as well as secondary education. 

Is there anything else Sierra Leone should do?

Now, Sierra Leone’s government should raise awareness, particularly in rural areas, about the new law and the harmful effects of child marriage. The government should also address other prevalent harmful practices linked to child marriage, such as female genital mutilation. It should collaborate with local communities, nongovernmental groups, and international organizations to publicly campaign about the harms associated with child marriage, while also providing support services for married children and children at risk of child marriage. 

The government will also need to continue focusing on keeping girls in school, while it develops sustainable economic opportunities and social programs that empower girls and their families.

That’s Human Rights Watch when it’s not obsessing over pale prosperous men who pretend to be women.

We’re doomed. Toast. Dead in the water.

While Republican candidate Donald Trump faces criticism for the number of falsehoods he uttered, much of the attention has been focused on President Joe Biden’s poor performance.

Biden appeared to struggle in several of his answers. As a result, concerns about his age and mental fitness have only risen further. Some Democrats have even asked after the debate whether the president could be replaced as the party’s presidential candidate.

Toast.

Oklahoma embraces theocracy:

Oklahoma’s top education official has ordered schools in the state to begin incorporating the Bible into lessons, in the latest US cultural flashpoint over religion in the classroom. A directive sent by Republican state Superintendent Ryan Walters said the rule was compulsory, requiring “immediate and strict compliance”.

All lessons? How can you “incorporate the Bible” into math lessons, science lessons, geography lessons? History, yes, but algebra, no.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr Walters described the Bible as “an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone”.

“Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation, which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction,” he added.

It’s true that it’s relevant to US (and other) history, and it’s also relevant to English. The KJV is everywhere in English-language literature, so sure, teach that. But if you mean preach from it in all classes, get out of here.

His announcement, which covers grades five to 12, drew criticism from civil rights organisations and groups that advocate for a strict separation of church and state.

“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement quoted by AP news agency. “This is textbook Christian Nationalism: Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else’s children. Not on our watch,” she added.

Unless of course he gets away with it.