Consider carefully the malice. Seriously. Consider it very very very carefully. There’s a lot of it, and it’s persistent, and it targets mostly women. Get your considering boots on.

Sarah’s full tweet:

And as I have made very clear to the BSB, you need to consider carefully the malice behind much of this. This man requests anonymity – it is granted to the extent that I will not be informed of either complaint or response. Man then publishes entire thing to show that claimed fragility was bogus. If the BSB proceeded with this then presumably I would not be told the name of the accuser. I consider this unacceptable. Complainants must be named because – in my now considerable experience – the majority are vexatious.

A minor quibble. Isn’t “at [ ] earliest convenience” meant to be the earliest convenience of other people, not oneself? Isn’t “at my earliest convenience” rather absurd? It’s a semi-polite bossy order given to someone else, not a musing on one’s own future plans. Isn’t it?

As Biden digs in…

Defiance has become as much a part of Joe Biden’s psychology as Delaware.

Well that’s one way of putting it. Another way is that Joe Biden is all for Joe Biden.

But as the president and his inner circle dig in following his disastrous debate performance last week, a growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want him to step aside for the good of the party – and the country.

“Digging in” isn’t always a virtue.

“There’s a large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about the president’s candidacy, representing a broad swath of the caucus,” another House Democratic lawmaker told CNN on condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “We are deeply concerned about his trajectory and his ability to win. We want to give him space to make a decision [to step aside], but we will be increasingly vocal about our concerns if he doesn’t.”

Biden is expected to meet Wednesday with Democratic governors and congressional leaders, the White House said Tuesday. The announcement came after CNN reported that some governors expressed concerns about the president’s debate performance. The governors, one source said, were worried about going public with their concerns out of fear it would lead to Biden digging in further.

Great. We can’t tell him to get out because he’ll just dig in, so we’re stuck with him. Heads he wins tails we lose.

BBC drools over guy who plays darts:

A transgender woman and darts player from Hull who has faced a wave of abuse and exclusion from competitions says she has been questioning her future within the game. Samantha Lewis’s passion for darts runs deep, and the sport has spanned generations in her family.

That is, his grandparents played darts and his father plays darts. Very generations-spanny, very newsworthy.

However, Ms Lewis, 28, has been left wondering if she should continue in the sport.

Here he is:

That arm, that wrist, that hand, those shoulders, that neck. Never mind darts, he could be wrestling bulls.

But oh dear, some people are saying men shouldn’t be playing in women’s darts competitions. Can you believe it?

Ms Lewis was banned from participating in the England Darts Open in Devon, receiving the rejection message via Facebook – a move she said was “very unprofessional”. The exclusion and online harassment have taken a severe toll on her mental health.

For some reason the BBC doesn’t say a word about the mental health of women who want to compete against women.

“England Darts has canvassed its players and executives on this very important issue concerning the future of women’s darts, and how England can continue to protect the integrity within our sport for its female members,” it said. It added that including “non-birth-gender females” in women’s competitions could “ultimately result in the demise of our women’s sport”.

Other darts competitions do allow transgender women to compete, depending on their testosterone levels. While Ms Lewis qualifies for them, she is taking a break at the moment to focus on her mental health. Her message to people who have contributed to her current struggles is a plea for empathy and respect. “Just keep your opinions to yourself. I’m still human at the end of the day. Think before you speak,” she said.

A plea for empathy and respect for him, that is. The BBC doesn’t see fit to say anything about empathy and respect for women.

Oh interesting, Willoughby is now claiming to be persecuted and marginalized the way immigrants are.

Which is so fascinating because you’ll never guess how he’s talked about immigrants himself.

Barbed wire in the Channel to drown migrants – yet here he is claiming he’s being treated as badly as migrants are.

He really is the worst of the worst, isn’t he.

Rock bottom.

The Bookseller informs us:

Three of the biggest UK publishers’ Pride networks have responded to the launch of an anonymous gender critical network, releasing a joint statement saying “publishing should be a safe and inclusive space for all, including our trans and non-binary authors and colleagues”.

Also including our spinach-eating authors and colleagues and our sedentary authors and colleagues and our poker-playing authors and colleagues and our beer-drinking authors and colleagues…one could go on this way into infinity.

Who is saying publishing should not be a safe and inclusive space for anyone?

No one, of course. Not one damn person. You can search until your pith helmet is a mere rag but you won’t find anyone saying that.

And while we’re on the subject, why are adults constantly driveling about “safe and inclusive spaces” anyway? Isn’t it a tad babyish for people over, say, five?

Ah well. The point of course, as always, is to join the bien pensants in stomping on a new organization that dares to be “inclusive” of female people.

SEEN in Publishing, launched online last week, with a press release stating that it was aimed at publishing professionals, authors and creatives who “believe in the material reality of sex”.

That comma after “SEEN in publishing” is a mistake. Ignore it and the sentence makes grammatical sense. Keep it and you’re left wondering what the verb was supposed to be. Funny that book boffins can’t even proofread their own press releases.

Pride networks from Pan Macmillan, Penguin Random House UK and Hachette UK released a joint statement to express their solidarity for trans and non-binary publishing professionals.

The group stated: “We are disappointed to see the announcement of the SEEN in Publishing group earlier this week. We are concerned that the anonymous nature of this group could negatively impact the work environment and undermine individual safety, affecting some of the most marginalised in our communities.”

Why “negatively impact”? Why not “harm” or “damage” or “injure”?

In fact there’s probably a common thread here. The kind of people who rush to adopt the idiotic vocabulary of “safe and inclusive space” and “the most marginalised in our communities” are also the kind of people who rush to adopt dopy periphrastic gargle like “negatively impacted” in place of “harmed.” I don’t say that in jest. The weird damp over-anxious concern that words like “harmed” are somehow dangerous is a close relative of the weird damp over-anxious concern about the feelings of men in lipstick.

It added: “We feel strongly that publishing should be a safe and inclusive space for all, including our trans and non-binary authors and colleagues. We stand in support of any LGBTQ+ colleagues that have been negatively impacted by this news and are here to assist those impacted by the announcement.”

Jesus. See what I mean? Their brains are mush.

In a statement, the SEEN in Publishing network said: “We founded this network because we believe our industry should be a safe and inclusive space for everyone, including for those with gender critical views. Our dearest wish is to foster a culture within publishing where everyone’s views are listened to without fear or favour.”

Yes but what about all the negative impactification???? And “the most marginalised in our communities”???? Where is your compassion and sympathy and concern and caring and worry and fret and sorrow?

Best wishes to SEEN in Publishing.

Another big surge forward on the road to hell.

The US supreme court’s decision on Monday to confer broad immunity to former presidents is likely to eviscerate numerous parts of the criminal prosecution against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In other words yes, the presidency is in effect a dictatorship.

Most crucially for the special counsel, Jack Smith, his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.

“There’s such divinity doth hedge a king…”

The alleged illegal conduct came in five categories: Trump pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud; Trump pressing his vice-president to return him to the White House; Trump trying to obstruct Congress from certifying the election; Trump giving a speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors .

Roberts undercut at least three of the five alleged categories in the opinion.

Trump’s interactions with justice department officials, including his threats to fire the then attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and the then acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, were absolutely immune because overseeing the department was a core function, Roberts found.

So a president can tell justice department officials to do anything, no matter how depraved and/or criminal, because overseeing the department is a core function.

Trump’s interactions with Pence, including pressuring him to reject electoral votes for Joe Biden in Congress on January 6, were presumptively immune because presidential discussions about vice-presidential responsibility were part of the job.

So a president can tell a vice-president to murder heads of state, rob banks, hijack planes, because telling the vp what to do is part of the job, is that right?

The insults just keep rolling in.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on How it happened.

One of the reasons Biden won in 2020 is that the Democrats had not cultivated any good alternatives to him.

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris. None of them looked like reasonable choices for President to me, and surely to many other Americans, too. I’m all for youthful “energetic grassroots” lefty mojo, but at the Presidential level, I want nation-leadership and world-leadership qualities, too. Big-picture compromise, shrewdness in global geopolitics, that kind of thing. Especially so, as progressivism has begun spiralling into absurd extremism at home, and the threats from abroad have gotten more severe.

The Dems have had four years to start building up-and-coming talent, and they’ve come up with bupkis.

They should take some cues from the entertainment world. The Hollywood system plants fresh crops of future A-listers years in advance. For example, I used to be roommates with a young actress, who was then relatively unknown, who seemed to know that she was going to be on the cover of certain magazines years in advance, based apparently on contracts for films that had not yet even completed production.

Sure enough, two or three years later, a batch of films in which she was the star came out, the Vanity Fair and Vogue and Elle and Interview covers came true, and she was even a presenter at the Oscars. (She’s since gone on to become an Oscar, Tony, and BAFTA nominee, too. She’s a major movie star.)

Actors compete fiercely with each other for coveted roles in films, but the industry as a whole still manages to come together to bring new talent into the fold, for the sake of the industry overall, to prevent existing stars hoarding all the good parts, leaving the well of new stars to run dry.

The Dems have not learned how to balance the competition between politicians in their stable with fostering a system of bringing in new talent. They’re overly reliant on dynastic politics instead — Clintons, Kennedys, Bidens, etc. Trusted names over fresh new faces. Everyone’s loyal to their tribe.

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.