Shaming but not at all surprising.

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.

Nothing about all the voter suppression bills?

The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91) and Slovakia (90).

…

The report details the inequities that minority groups, especially Black people and Native Americans face when it comes to the criminal justice system and voting. It also illustrates that public trust in government has been damaged by the way rich Americans can use their money to exert outsize influence on American politics.

Also? By the fact that a malevolent ignorant crook can get elected to the top job in government.

The report offers three recommendations for improving American democracy: removing barriers to voting, limiting the influence of money in politics, and establishing independent redistricting commissions. Democrats in Washington are pushing all three of those reforms as part of a sweeping voting package currently under consideration in the US Senate.

Fingers crossed.

Voting rights shmoting rights.

Seizing on Donald Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election, Republicans have launched a brazen attack on voting, part of an effort to entrench control over a rapidly changing electorate by changing the rules of democracy. As of mid-February, 253 bills were pending to restrict voting in 43 states. Many of those restrictions take direct aim at mail-in and early voting, the very policies that led to November’s record turnout.

The filthy little truth behind all this is that Republicans can’t win in a fair fight, because there are only so many billionaires to go around.

Republicans have openly talked about their intentions. “Everybody shouldn’t be voting,” John Kavanagh, a Republican in the Arizona state legislature, told CNN earlier this month. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

He means “not everybody should be voting.” Saying “everybody shouldn’t be voting” is a tad extreme even for Republicans. That aside, it’s still a remarkable claim. The quality of votes? Like what, the size of the bank account, the pallor of the skin, the content of the underpants?

Trump dismissed proposals to make it easier to vote last year by saying: “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” And this month, Michael Carvin, a lawyer representing the Arizona Republican party, said something similar when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked him what interest the party had in defending two Arizona voting restrictions. Lifting those restrictions, Carvin said, “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.”

Helpfully explicit. “We put those restrictions there so that we would win.”

Later this year, Republicans in many states will redraw electoral districts for both congressional and state legislative offices across the country, something the constitution mandates once per decade. This will give Republicans an opportunity to pack GOP-friendly voters into certain districts while spreading Democratic voters thin across others, further distorting democracy and ensuring their re-election.

And all of this comes at a moment when the US supreme court appears wholly uninterested in protecting voting rights. The increasingly conservative supreme court has signaled in recent years that it is not going to stand in the way of lawmakers who make it harder to vote, issuing significant decisions that gutted the Voting Rights Act while also giving the green light to aggressive voter purging and extreme partisan redistricting.

Which is not so much non-interest in voting rights as active interest in gutting voting rights.

“The coordinated onslaught of voter suppression bills is not the norm,” Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate widely credited with helping flip the state, told the Guardian. “What is so notable about this moment, and so disconcerting, is that they are not hiding. There is no attempt to pretend that the intention is not to restrict votes.”

They no longer need to pretend.

Separation of church and state? Whaaaaaaaat?

Look here, look at this dollar bill, it says right here “in god we trust” – and it says it on all the other bills too, the five n the ten n the twenty n the million, all of them. It’s always been that way! Well, since 1956, which might as well be always, because who cares about before that.

Also, by the way, Shabbos is Saturday and the one for Muslims is Friday and don’t Buddhists have it on Monday and Hindus on Tuesday and Jains on Wednesday and Sikhs on Thursday? So, there you go, sorry, no voting possible.

Unbelievable.

Aimee Challenor! Of all people.

Uh huh, and the Washington Post would say the same if a boy of 15 said his “identity” was a tiger or a can of garbanzo beans or a daffodil or Peru or Mars.

Knowing what “sex” means doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one. Knowing that sex isn’t changeable the way a shirt or a name or a religion is doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one. Knowing which sex pushes out babies and which sex does not doesn’t require knowing everyone who has one or the other.

Uh…

It’s true, the page exists.

How interesting, another example of “No reasonable person would believe this/don’t take what we say seriously” from people committing public crimes against the public.

A senior Saudi official issued what was perceived to be a death threat against the independent United Nations investigator, Agnès Callamard, after her investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with the Guardian, the outgoing special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings said that a UN colleague alerted her in January 2020 that a senior Saudi official had twice threatened in a meeting with other senior UN officials in Geneva that month to have Callamard “taken care of” if she was not reined in by the UN.

…

The Guardian independently corroborated Callamard’s account of the January 2020 episode.

The alleged threats were made, she said, at a “high-level” meeting between Geneva-based Saudi diplomats, visiting Saudi officials and UN officials in Geneva. During the exchange, Callamard was told, they criticised her work on the Khashoggi murder, registering their anger about her investigation and her conclusions. The Saudi officials also raised baseless allegations that she had received money from Qatar – a frequent refrain against critics of the Saudi government.

Callamard said one of the visiting senior Saudi officials is then alleged to have said that he had received phone calls from individuals who were prepared to “take care of her”.

When UN officials expressed alarm, other Saudis who were present sought to reassure them that the comment ought not to be taken seriously. The Saudi group then left the room but, Callamard was told, the visiting senior Saudi official stayed behind, and repeated the alleged threat to the remaining UN officials in the room.

But don’t take it seriously.

Ah so that’s how they’re going to play it – the “nobody could be stupid enough to believe the lies we told” defense. Bold move.

A key member of the legal team that sought to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump is defending herself against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” could have mistaken her wild claims about election fraud last November as statements of fact.

What were they statements of then? Not fact but…? Fill in the blank [______].

In a motion to dismiss a complaint by the large US-based voting machine company Dominion, lawyers for Sidney Powell argued that elaborate conspiracies she laid out on television and radio last November while simultaneously suing to overturn election results in four states constituted legally protected first amendment speech.

“No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” argued lawyers for Powell, a former federal prosecutor from Texas who caught Trump’s attention through her involvement in the defense of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Ok, so they were not truly statements of fact, so they were lies. She’s telling us she tried to help Trump steal the election by telling lies about the voting machines.

But wait, the audience murmurs, they could be mistakes rather than lies. Mere honest mistakes; anyone can make a mistake; mistakes aren’t lies.

True enough, but, there are times and situations and contexts where people are expected to take very good care not to make mistakes of that kind, and indeed there are situations where people have no right to make mistakes of that kind. The situation in which Sidney Powell said these things that no reasonable person would consider true was very much that kind of situation – it’s hard to think of a situation that would be more so. She said the things in order to overturn an election. The stakes don’t get a whole lot higher than that.

Also, if no reasonable person would believe the claims, then Sidney Powell must have not believed them herself. She’s not claiming to be a not-reasonable person, I assume? Could be wrong, but that’s my guess, what with being a lawyer and all. If they’re beyond belief to reasonable people, then they were beyond belief to her, so they weren’t mistakes, they were lies. Lies in pursuit of stealing an election.

Powell falsely stated on television and in legal briefs that Dominion machines ran on technology that could switch votes away from Trump, technology she said had been invented in Venezuela to help steal elections for the late Hugo Chávez.

Knowing, we’re now told, that she was lying. How interesting.

Interesting.

The lesbian share is tiny now in both charts.

2015 is the year I gave up trying to be quiet.

Seth Abramson says enough with the low-rank insurrectionists, what about the people with real power?

Thus far, over 320 Trumpists have been arrested for their actions on January 6, 2021, and the DOJ says that more than 100 additional arrests are coming. But what many of us are most anxiously awaiting is not more arrests of lower-middle-class and middle-class Donald Trump supporters—though the massive video archive published by ProPublica confirms that many of these richly deserve indictment and incarceration—but rather the as-yet unaccountable elites who orchestrated the events of January 6.

For instance, we’ve yet to see what sort of accountability, legal or professional, awaits politicians like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), all of whom helped strategize and/or incite the events of January 6.

He names more people who should be answering questions, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones. (Roger Stone has a pardon, but maybe that doesn’t mean he can’t be interviewed? I should know, but I don’t.)

And of course America still waits eagerly for the first signs of justice for the Trumps themselves, along with their closest allies and advisers, a list of insurrection-adjacent figures that includes Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Trump Jr. girlfriend and Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, Katrina Pierson, Corey Lewandowski, Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Lindell, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn. We know, by and large, what these men and women did on and before January 6; what we don’t know is why the FBI has apparently yet to speak with any of them or seize and search their electronic devices. We don’t know why we are told to cheer the arrests of Trumpist peons even as the powerful, wealthy, and/or influential people who guided their conduct are ignored by federal law enforcement.

I bet we can have a pretty good guess though.

It’s always always always about…not-you-but-me. Always about yes yes you have needs too, of course I get that, but

me me me me me me me me

Man tells woman “Yeah sad about your miscarriage but you still have to let me join you in the toilets.”

GLAAD has a list of the damned, which it laughably calls its “Accountability Project.”

The GLAAD Accountability Project catalogs anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and discriminatory actions of politicians, commentators, organization heads, religious leaders, and legal figures who have used their platforms, influence and power to spread misinformation and harm LGBTQ people.

The Project reveals these individuals’ own words and actions, to help all Americans evaluate whether to vote for them, or quote them, or support their point of view. As journalists, newsrooms and platforms write stories or book guests for interviews and segments, they can check the record, add context to stories, or help decide whether a person with this history should continue to be given unchallenged air time or ink. See the complete list of profiles in the dropdown menu to the right.

The complete list is looooooong.

Let’s see some examples. JK Rowling for instance; part of item 3 of the indictment:

—Doubled down on remarks and support for anti-trans researchers, during Pride month 2020 and as the world endured the historic pandemic, and the U.S. a national reckoning on racial injustice and police violence, in lengthy essay of inaccuracies about transgender people and identity, claiming that as “an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity” she has “deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

It’s not even literate, let alone thoughtful or reasonable. Are they letting the kids do all the writing?

On a less inflammatory subject – drone flies all but into an erupting volcano.

The ACLU yet again.

But at least some of that legislation, and perhaps all, is not “anti-trans” or criminalization, it’s just codification of the formerly well understood principle that boys can’t play on girls’ athletic teams.

The problem is built in: the special favors being demanded by trans “activists” are so damaging to female people that it wouldn’t work to state them clearly, so the ACLU has to screen them with layer upon layer of inaccurate description. It’s a pretty disgusting practice for what used to be a respected civil rights organization.

The link takes us to an appeal from last month full of the usual obfuscation:

Transgender athletes want to participate in school sports for the same reason as anybody else: to find a sense of belonging and social engagement, to be a part of a team, and to challenge themselves.

And for the potential monetary reward via a scholarship. It’s extremely dishonest for the ACLU to conceal that part. The ACLU naturally doesn’t want to come right out and say it’s campaigning for boys to be able to “win” scholarships intended for girls – but it does want to do exactly that.

But states and schools across the country are trying to exclude trans people from enjoying the benefits of sports on equal terms with their cisgender peers. Not only do these proposed laws discriminate against trans youth in ways that compromise their health, social and emotional development, and safety, they also raise a host of privacy concerns.

Look at how evasive that is. People who haven’t been following the issue are going to think this is about banning trans people from sport altogether, but of course it’s nothing of the kind.

Is there such a thing as Civil Liars?

Next weekend, a free screening of

wait for it

The Transvagina Diaries.

Yay! Nothing I want more than to watch a movie about homemade vaginas.

Isn’t that sweet, it’s “presented for National Women’s History Month – the story of men with fake vaginas. What’s that got to do with Women’s History Month? Well, not a god damn thing, but that’s the bliss of it. There is nothing more affirming than taking something meant for women and handing it over to men instead.

But it’s the holy holiday of Spring Break. You can’t expect people to obey rules about not spreading a lethal disease during Spring Break. That would be outright fascism, and also infallible proof of a Personality Disorder.

A state of emergency has been declared in the US city of Miami Beach over concerns large crowds gathering for spring break pose a coronavirus risk.

…

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said thousands of tourists had brought “chaos and disorder” to the city.

“It feels like a rock concert, wall-to-wall people over blocks and blocks,” Mr Gelber told CNN. “If you’re coming here to go crazy, go somewhere else.”

No because this is the beach. It’s a human right to go to the beach for Spring Break.

On Sunday, the Miami Beach city commission voted to extend the curfew and other measures for up to three more weeks.

At an emergency meeting, Mayor Gelber told the commission South Beach had become “a tinder over the last couple of weeks”.

He said tourists had flooded into the city since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the state an “oasis of freedom” from coronavirus restrictions late last month.

Freedom freedom freedom, and beach. America. Big Macs. Freedom freedom.

This kind of thing is why the trans ideology is convincing to so many.

As a fashion-obsessed teenager, I dreamed of working for Vogue. What girl didn’t?

The girl who doesn’t give a shit about fashion and has other things to dream of, that’s what girl didn’t. My guess is there are more than two or three of them. Fashion really isn’t so enthralling that half the population dreams of spending her working life thinking about it.

This was in the 2000s, and smartphones weren’t everywhere yet, so we’d leaf through the latest copy hungrily at the back of the class. I loved the pictures, the clothes, even the adverts. But most of all I loved the masthead and the index. Who were these glamorous humans with lovely-sounding names and exotic job titles?

Definitely. I find mastheads so fascinating I just stop there.

Vogue went man-in-charge in the 1960s.

In a reshuffling of power, the art director, Alexander Liberman, was apparently offered the editorship of American Vogue. To this he replied: “I am a man. I have no intention of becoming that involved with fashion.” So instead they created the title of editorial director, which he took with gusto. It meant a woman got to be editor-in-chief but he controlled her.

During the 1980s, editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella was going bananas under this unusual arrangement. For one, Liberman was a fan of Penthouse and Playboy, and kept trying to insert overly sexual content into Vogue, much to Mirabella’s disgust. She also had no agency to choose her own staff, since Liberman decided who was hired or fired. This meant she could lose an invaluable ally at the drop of a hat, or be forced to work with someone who didn’t fit on her team.

She was never included in conversations on the direction of the magazine. When she wanted to run a story on breast cancer, Liberman said: “Vogue readers are more interested in fashion than breast cancer.” When she wanted to cover the pro-choice movement, Liberman said: “Nobody cares.” When she wanted to write about women entering the job market, he said: “Women are cheap labour and always will be.”

And nobody cares.

Catherine Bennett isn’t in the mood to be told to calm down.

Less than a day separated the arrest of a serving Metropolitan police officer on suspicion of Sarah Everard’s murder from the first suggestions that women calm down and put it in perspective…

A professor of criminology, Marian FitzGerald, thought it important to tell other women – twice – on the BBC, not to get “hysterical”. She was being interviewed by a senior man in an organisation which has evidently shared her reservations about women’s fallibility – were they worthy, even, of being paid the same as men? – and it duly went unchallenged.

The message, that women’s difficulties with the status quo can be just as troublesome as male offending behaviour, was seemingly reinforced by the BBC’s favourite troll, the ubiquitous ex-judge Jonathan Sumption. “Most profound cultural problems like this are not easily amenable to government action or legislation,” he claimed, on Any Questions? “It’s going to be a gradual process, I’m sorry but we’ve got to be realistic about this.” It was only to be expected: Sumption had previously levelled at female lawyers the same imputation of naivety. “It takes time. You’ve got to be patient.” Via such insights do the retired male beneficiaries of overwhelmingly unequal professions recommend themselves to Radio 4 producers.

Yes but you know how it is – women are just so annoying with our shrill demands and strident claims and hysterical reactions.

Just last week an off-duty police officer, Oliver Banfield, remained at liberty after his conviction for attacking a lone woman at night. He stays in his post. Shortly before, Javed Miah, who sexually assaulted a woman at night, running away when she used the SOS function on her phone, avoided jail because he was the “sole earner”. In February a chef who admitted kissing and touching a resisting colleague somehow convinced a magistrate that it was his Turkish culture. Men with an interest in terrorising vulnerable women may have been further reassured by the suspended sentence handed, at Kingston crown court last year, to an Uber driver who harassed and exposed himself for 20 minutes to a woman in his cab, where she was avoiding unsafe streets. Not that the recent five-year sentence for a man who murdered his wife, pleading lockdown distress, left much room for doubt about values still prevailing in parts of what is claimed – by men – to be an infinitely more enlightened system. Alleged equalities progress did not, for instance, prevent a professional tribunal deciding, in the case of a barrister turned upskirter, that it is possible to be both a member of the bar and a registered sex offender.

Yes but what is all that compared to an angry woman’s voice?

Sweet.

Updating to add James Dreyfus’s parody.

Fair Play for Women explains to the bosses what Stonewall really is:

Dear leaders of public sector organisations,

You think you are doing the right thing, appointing so-called LGBT representatives and inviting Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and the like to write policy for you. It’s time to open your eyes. Your own people are doing the work of transactivists and you’ll be the one left carrying the can.

Because the problem is L and G and B are nowhere and it’s all about the T.

Stonewall is considered wrongly an expert rather than a lobby group with its own priorities and objectives

It’s an easy mistake to make. You need a transgender policy so you task your transgender equality manager to write one and they go to the transgender groups for expert advice. Job done.

Here’s England Rugby proudly stating how its transgender inclusion policy was developed in partnership with Stonewall – as if that’s some kind of quality assurance mark. It’s not. You’ve been hoodwinked by a rather clever lobby group into believing it’s ok to expose yourself to the risk of women getting their necks snapped in a scrum with a male opponent.

Not to mention exposing women to that risk.