Rudy is reading the old love letters and crying.

Attorney Rudy Giuliani is “not currently” representing former President Donald Trump “in any legal matters,” Trump advisor Jason Miller said in a statement Tuesday, as the ex-president’s former personal lawyer faces multiple lawsuits against him for his role in Trump’s effort to overturn the presidential election results.

And this is the thanks he gets.

Lie down with dogs get up with fleas, pal. You knew what he is, and you chose to help him be it while having the power of the presidency.

Miller’s statement was in response to a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Trump, Giuliani and two far-right groups, which alleges the president and his lawyer violated the Ku Klux Klan Act in their attempt to stop the election results from being certified by Congress.

…

Giuliani has been sued for defamation twice in recent weeks for spreading unsubstantiated election fraud claims involving voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.

He is also reportedly under federal investigation by the Southern District of New York for his business dealings in Ukraine, and an ethics complaint has been filed that seeks to disbar Giuliani in New York.

Lotta fleas.

Talk about not getting it…

Days after Japan’s Olympics chief was forced to resign over sexist comments, the ruling party has decided to invite women to attend key meetings – as long as they do not speak.

No, see, guys, this is just the same thing all over again. The “sexist comments” in question were of the “women talk too much” variety. Telling women not to talk is not a fix for that problem. The problem is not women talking, the problem is MEN HAVING A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN TALKING.

Talking is basic. We need talking. Talking is why we have all this, very much including items like the Olympics, ruling parties, meetings, Japan – all of that is a product of language. If you don’t let women talk, you’re treating women as if they were pets.

The Liberal Democratic Party proposed allowing five female lawmakers to observe its all-male board meetings.

They cannot talk during the meeting – only submit opinions afterwards.

The Tokyo Olympics organising committee chief had sparked a firestorm by saying women talked too much in meetings.

Yoshiro Mori, 83, had remarked, in discussions over increasing the number of female board members, that “we have to make sure their speaking time is restricted somewhat, they have difficulty finishing.”

Men always think women talk too much, including when women have barely said anything and men have said thousands of words. This is what’s called a “distortion.” Men have a distorted sense of how much women talk, along with a distorted sense of how much domestic work they (the men) do. Distortions of this kind are a by-product of dominance.

An outstanding interview on Fresh Air with a law professor who got a part-time volunteer job as a cop in DC. Bonus: she’s Barbara Ehrenreich’s daughter. Highly recommended.

Actually it’s literally objectively false that men do experience misogynistic sexism, on account of how the “gyn” bit means women, and men are men. Men don’t experience misogynistic sexism even if they are wearing dresses and crippling shoes.

It doesn’t happen, because he isn’t one. He doesn’t get “sexually assaulted for being a woman,” because he isn’t a woman. Of course he can “identify out of it,” because he’s not in it to begin with.

There’s something very very sick about this envy of and theft of misogyny and violence.

No. Misogynistic sexism and sexual violence don’t happen to trans women, because they are not women. Hostility and violence directed at trans women is not directed at them because they’re women, for the simple and clear reason that they’re not women.

It’s all radical feminists’ fault that trans women can’t experience diseases of the uterus!

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at Miscellany Room.

Speaking only for myself, I have no opinion on whether or not Murphy is a bigot or got what she deserved. Certainly I’m aware of the skewed nature of the debate over trans issues and the casual accusations of transphobia; on the other hand, I haven’t scrutinized her writings enough to form an opinion.

For me, it’s just a sense that this kind of thing doesn’t belong in court. I won’t go so far as to say this was a frivolous lawsuit, but it was an utterly predictable and correct result in my opinion, as both a descriptive matter (current law pretty clearly precludes it) and a normative one (that body of law is wise and prudent in this regard).

I don’t know of any principled way to say that Murphy gets to have a judge or jury rule on whether Twitter’s moderation decisions are correct, but Donald Trump and Milo Yiannopolous don’t. Or every Slymepitter who got banned from B&W or Pharyngula don’t get to have a judge decide if Ophelia or PZ acted fairly and consistently. Of course you can say that Murphy’s banning was a bad decision and those other ones were good, and I might agree, but this is a question of who gets to decide that and how.

If disgruntled people can drag social networks and message boards and bloggers into court every time they’re unhappy, you’re not going to like where that leads. The threat of litigation alone is going to make moderation risky, especially for smaller players. People with deep pockets or access to interest groups with free lawyers are going to get deferential treatment from litigation-averse platforms. Terms of service and moderation decisions will get less nuanced so that companies can say “hey, we’re completely consistent, we ban these precise words and nothing else” (or whatever). This is also why I cringe at all the “repeal section 230” proposals from politicians of every stripe.

And all of those bad effects are true even if the courts do a super awesome job of sitting as the Twitter Judicial Review Panel. Which they most certainly would not. I assure you, there are many many judges who you do not want anywhere near these decisions, and here I’m talking less about political or other issue biases and more about simple ignorance — even in 2021, there are a shocking number of judges who are complete Luddites when it comes to the internet.

I don’t know if that makes me a free speech absolutist or not. That terminology gets a little confusing here anyway, in that many people would claim that Murphy is on the side of free speech here because she is fighting against “punishment” for her speech, so then we get into arguments about state action, and free speech rights of platforms vs the rights of their users… and to me that’s all unnecessary, because I think the pragmatic argument against this kind of litigation is so strong that you don’t even need to get into all that.

Suzanne Moore in The Telegraph:

I was a bit worried, I must admit, that I was doing this womanhood thing all wrong. For my whole life I haven’t really got the hang of it. There are many things that women are meant to be interested in: shopping, baking programmes, thrillers in which other women get tortured that leave me cold. Ditto: weddings, dating, baby showers, celebrity gossip about torsos with pouts.

And that’s just to start with.

But I shouldn’t have worried because the United Nations has come up with a new slogan and tweeted “There is no wrong way to be a woman. There is no wrong way to be a woman.” They actually said it seven times, but I don’t want you to pass out with boredom. Maybe if you chant it you reach nirvana or maybe women are just so thick they need telling over and over.

It’s because repetition makes it convincing.

It’s probably a page taken from religion’s book: repetition is a valued tool in that particular way of making humans believe stuff that is just made up. Recite this prayer every day, or better yet, recite it ten times every day. If you say it that often it must be true.

The right way to react to this ridiculous mantra is surely to feel murderous. What is this slogan for? Who is it for? These endless attempts at inclusivity mean that being a woman can now even be a feeling in a man’s head. Eddie Izzard, I saw the other day, had been voted the best female comedian. Sorry, but I am not laughing.

There is no wrong way to be a woman. Are they serious? Let me list the ways. I and many women live with them every single day.One of them is to live in fear. One woman is killed every three days in this country – a figure which has become much higher in lockdown. Being old is also seen by many as the wrong way to be a woman. Another is wanting sex. Or not wanting it at all. Both of these things can be regarded as “problematic”.

Having an opinion; not having an opinion. Talking; not talking. Laughing; not laughing. Having a job; not having a job.

You see, in recent years, it has been mostly wrong to be a woman in public life who stands up for the sex-based rights of other woman. Standing up for trans people is decent and right, but standing up for the rights of women apparently makes one a transphobe. If you start talking about the female experience and think it’s not just different to men’s but different for women of different ethnicities and classes, you will be called a bigot. Your job as a woman, unlike a man’s, is to include everyone, all the time.

And that goes double triple a hundred for men who say they are women. If you don’t include them in the Women Club you might as well carve up puppies and make tacos out of them.

One thing is clear though – if you are a woman the message you receive from birth is that you are pretty much always doing it wrong. That you will never be good enough.

Of course we can unite around all kinds of differences, and let them flourish. But these are differences that need to be acknowledged and talked about. Not brushed away in a simple ‘inclusive’ virtue signalling slogan. Otherwise we are left with a regurgitation of patent nonsense and the denial of women’s embodied experience. Womanhood becomes reduced to just an individual choice.

And if it’s just an individual choice, what the hell are we complaining about?

This will annoy Trump too:

The US top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, has been awarded a prestigious $1m (£717,000) Israeli prize for his commitment to science.

Dr Fauci, who was often at odds with former President Trump over how to handle the pandemic, was given the Dan David Prize for “defending science”.

He was also praised for advocating for Covid vaccines, and for his leadership on HIV research and Aids relief.

Why will that annoy Trump? Because he will take it as a rebuke to him, probably correctly. Fauci’s most conspicuous defending of science over the past year was defending it from Trump.

He was recognised for “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging Covid crisis”, the awards committee said in a statement.

Like from Trump, for instance, and Trump of course had by far the most power to meddle with him and sideline him.

“As the Covid-19 pandemic unravelled, [he] leveraged his considerable communication skills to address people gripped by fear and anxiety and worked relentlessly to inform individuals in the United States and elsewhere about the public health measures essential for containing the pandemic’s spread.

“In addition, he has been widely praised for his courage in speaking truth to power in a highly charged political environment.”

Yep, that’s aimed at Trump all right.

The lawsuits are piling up on Trump’s gilded Lawsuits Table.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is suing former President Trump, Rudy Giuliani and two far-right groups — the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — for allegedly conspiring to incite the deadly violence on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

The lawsuit, filed on Thompson’s behalf by the NAACP and the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, accuses Trump and the other defendants of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by trying to interfere in Congress’ certification of the Electoral College count. The legislation was part of a series of Enforcement Acts at the time intended to protect the enfranchisement of Black citizens from violence and intimidation.

Lets follow that link on the Act to learn more about it.

The Ku Klux Klan Act, the third of a series of increasingly stringent Enforcement Acts, was designed to eliminate extralegal violence and protect the civil and political rights of four million freed slaves. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, defined citizenship and guaranteed due process and equal protection of the law to all. Vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan, however, freely threatened African Americans and their white allies in the South and undermined the Republican Party’s plan for Reconstruction. The bill authorized the President to intervene in the former rebel states that attempted to deny “any person or any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws.” To take action against this newly defined federal crime, the President could suspend habeas corpus, deploy the U.S. military, or use “other means, as he may deem necessary.” Opponents denounced the bill as an unconstitutional attack on state governments and individual liberty.

That is, the individual liberty of white men to use violence to keep former slaves terrorized and informally enslaved.

Back to NPR:

After the vote [on impeachment], the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, delivered a scathing speech in which he blamed Trump for the violence on Jan. 6 but said he voted to acquit because he believes a former president can’t be tried by the Senate. McConnell also said Trump can be held liable in the court system.

Thompson’s lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and seeks compensatory and punitive damages, aims to do just that.

“I am privileged to partner with the NAACP to have my day in court so that the perpetrators of putting members of Congress at risk can be held accountable,” Thompson told reporters Tuesday.

The main sweep of allegations, and many of the details as well, presented in the lawsuit mirror those made by House managers in Trump’s impeachment trial. It alleges that Trump spent months pushing baseless claims about election fraud, primed his supporters with lies, and ultimately directed them Jan. 6 at the Capitol.

On live tv.

Thompson, who represents Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, was at the Capitol when the mob overran the building. The lawsuit says he was in Gallery C of the House to vote on the Electoral College ballots when the attack began.

Thompson heard rioters pounding on the doors of the House chamber, it says, and saw security guards blocka[d]e the door with furniture.

“Plaintiff Thompson heard a gunshot, the source of which, at the time, was unknown to him, although he later learned that it had killed one of the rioters who had forced her way into the Capitol lobby,” the suit says.

Thompson and other lawmakers were told to lie on the floor and put on gas masks. Eventually, he and his colleagues were able to leave the gallery. They sought shelter in a room with some 200-300 others, including lawmakers, staff and family.

“During this entire time, Plaintiff Thompson reasonably feared for his physical safety,” the lawsuit says. “While trapped in the building, during the siege by the rioters that Defendants unleashed on the Capitol, Plaintiff Thompson feared for his life and worried that he might never see his family again.”

The lawsuit notes that this all took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that Thompson, who is in his 70s, is at high risk to the virus. After the siege ended, it says, two lawmakers who sheltered in place with Thompson tested positive for COVID-19.

Git’im.

Yo, family values!

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., is being shunned and scorned by relatives after voting to impeach Donald Trump, according to a letter published in The New York Times this week.

Eleven members of his family signed a letter lambasting him for his vote last month to impeach the then-president, who they defended as a Christian.

As a Christian?

Come on, Kinzingers…it’s not azza Christian you’re defending him, it’s azza brutal sadistic racist misogynist authoritarian. That would be true even if he were clearly a Christian in some sense, but since he obviously isn’t, it’s even more true. It’s true with bells on.

He’s not a Christian in the sense of church-going bible-reading rigid conservative, and he’s not a Christian in the sense of compassionate generous pacifist humanitarian.

“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote, accusing Kinzinger of going “against your Christian principles” and joining the “devil’s army.”

They talk to God on the phone, do they? They text God? They hear from God on Facebook? How do they know God is disappointed?

“It is now most embarrassing to us that we are related to you,” they added.

“We should listen even more grievances against you, but decided you are not worth more of our time to list them,” the letter from his relatives continued. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”

They on the other hand have covered it in glory.

What law is that exactly?

What law=trans women are women? What kind of law would that even be? Laws are not statements of fact, they are laws. They don’t take the form “rabbits are shoes” “beech trees are teapots” “men are women.”

She’s an MSP ffs. You’d think she’d know what laws are.

A comrade.

Regular commenter Arcadia sent me a correspondence she had with the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition.

How can we help you?: I was wondering if the proposed legislation utilises gender neutral language, similar to recent NSW legislation, which did not use “woman”, “girl” or “female” in order to be inclusive?

Thanks.

Reply:

Hi [Arcadia]

I have attached the Bill – it does use gender neutral language as do all government Bills since amending laws were passed by Weatherall government – maybe 2017?

regards,
Brigid

Reply:

Hi Brigid,

Who was consulted about the use of the term “person” throughout and zero references to “woman”, “girl” or “female”?

How was the decision reached that the bill would be worded this way?

Kind regards,

[Arcadia]

Apparently one question is all that’s allowed.

Well, if you’re a novice lesbian looking for advice on how to get started, I suggest not consulting healthline. Its guide for beginners is kind of…wrong.

Before we talk about lesbian sex, let’s talk about what the phrase means.

Ok – the phrase means female-female sex. It means same-sex sex for female people. What’s there to talk about?

Usually, people use the term “lesbian sex” to mean sex between two women.

Usually? If sometimes people use the term to mean something else, then they’re using the wrong term…unless you just mean “because hahaha it can be between two or three or ten women!”

If that’s the case, remember that those women might not identify as lesbian.

Ok, maybe they’re in denial, maybe they’re experimenting, who cares. Where are you going with this?

For example, they could identify as bisexual, pansexual, queer, or even heterosexual. Sex between women isn’t limited to lesbians.

Ok but this was supposed to be about lesbian sex, so can you stop throat-clearing and get on with it?

Remember, also, that “lesbian sex” isn’t limited to cisgender couples.

Ohhhhh fuck off. Cisgender shmisgender; it’s not lesbian sex if it involves a man who “identifies as” a woman.

It also includes other people who have vaginas, people with penises, and people with intersex genitalia.

Imagine being poor Clarissa age 15 wanting basic information on lesbian sex and having to wade through all this bullshit first.

Heterosexual couples, for example, may have oral, manual, or penetrative sex. It all depends on the couple and what they like to do.

But you’re supposed to be explaining about lesbian sex!

Similarly, lesbian sex — or sex between women, whether cis or trans — can include whatever kind of sex you’d like to try.

In other words, Clarissa, we’re grooming you to agree to have sex with a man who says he’s a trans woman. You’re welcome!

Jumping ahead a little –

There are lots of myths out there about lesbian sex. Here are a few:

…

It’s easier because you’re both women. Remember that just because you’re both women doesn’t mean you have the same genitals — for example, one person might be a cis woman with a vagina, while the other might be a trans woman with a penis.

Remember, you, a lesbian, might find yourself having “lesbian sex” with a man. You are not allowed to say no.

Credit:

Medically reviewed by Jennifer Litner, LMFT, CST — Written by Sian Ferguson on June 4, 2020

The conceit rises off him like steam.

Not a professor, not an athlete but a cheat, not world famous, barely mentioned by right wing media. Other than that, sure, bub, whatever you say.

Do psychiatrists in fact google patients during a session? Does that ring true? I think not.

The US is unusual among developed countries in that its life expectancy has gone down in the last few years.

In most high-income countries, life expectancy has been increasing, gradually but steadily, for decades. The last time that life expectancy in the United States showed a similar decline was in 1915–18, as a result of military deaths in the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic.

This time, the culprit has been a surge of drug overdoses and suicides, both linked to the use of opioid drugs. The death rate from drug overdoses more than tripled between 1999 and 2017, and that from opioid overdoses increased almost sixfold during the same period.

…

This crisis is often referred to as the opioid epidemic and, just like an infectious-disease epidemic, it has a distinct natural history. In the United States, the country most severely affected, it arose through a confluence of well-intentioned efforts to improve pain management by doctors and aggressive — even fraudulent — marketing by pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Managing pain is obviously desirable. Marketing drugs, not so much.

Prescriptions for opioids increased gradually throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s, when pharmaceutical companies introduced new opioid-based products — and, in particular, OxyContin, a sustained-release formulation of a decades-old medication called oxycodone, manufactured by Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut — that such prescriptions surged and the use of opioids to treat chronic pain became widespread.

Purdue Pharma and other companies promoted their opioid products heavily. They lobbied lawmakers, sponsored continuing medical-education courses, funded professional and patient organizations and sent representatives to visit individual doctors. During all of these activities, they emphasized the safety, efficacy and low potential for addiction of prescription opioids.

And they did all this not as disinterested medical experts but as people flogging a product for profit.

In fact, opioids are not particularly effective for treating chronic pain; with long-term use, people can develop tolerance to the drugs and even become more sensitive to pain. And the claim that OxyContin was less addictive than other opioid painkillers was untrue — Purdue Pharma knew that it was addictive, as it admitted in a 2007 lawsuit that resulted in a US$635 million fine for the company. But doctors and patients were unaware of that at the time.

Painkillers are not the only drugs that get marketed heavily.

As a scholar of antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt finds Marjorie Greene’s claims about Jewish lasers in space all too familiar.

Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy.

In her QAnon-inspired worldview, behind them all was a small group of inordinately powerful people who had global – not national – loyalties. They conspired against the common welfare to advance their own interests. They mutilated babies. They amassed power and money in order to harm good, hard-working and, one can fairly assume, Christian folks. This is the foundation stone of classic antisemitism. There are certainly non-Jews in the swamp Greene wants to “drain”. But ultimately it is Jews who are the puppeteers.

Antisemitism is a prejudice, akin to so many others. Just like racism and an array of other hatreds, it relies on stereotypes and assumes that all members of the group share those characteristics. Antisemitism has unique characteristics that differentiate it from other hatreds. The racist “punches down” and loathes persons of colour because they are apparently “lesser than” the white person. They are, the racist proclaims, not as smart, industrious, qualified or worthy. In contrast, the antisemite “punches up”. The Jew is supposedly more powerful, ingenious and financially adept than the non-Jew. Jews use their prodigious skills to advance themselves and harm others. The Jew is not just to be loathed. The Jew is to be feared.

Women have now entered that category – we too are ok to punch because that’s punching up. We control gender and being female, and we oppress the tragic men who want to wear pretty dresses.

I don’t believe Greene is advocating physical violence against Jews. It was hard, however, not to be struck by her choice of words when she spoke on the House floor to argue that these were no longer her views. Rather than apologise, she condemned the attacks on her as an attempt to “crucify” her. Crucify?

To be fair, I think her choice of word could easily be just stupidity rather than malice. I’m not sure she’s clever enough to remember that the word “crucify” has a specifically Christian antisemitic resonance.

Ultimately, however, this is about something more all-encompassing than even antisemitism. It is about an attack on democracy and the institutions that undergird that democracy. Conspiracies, such as those peddled by QAnon, are not just infused with antisemitic symbolism and themes, but are designed to create doubt about democratic institutions including Congress, the courts, financial agencies, electoral processes, the media and anything that is even obliquely connected to democracy.

Every act of prejudicial physical violence begins with words. Greene has provided an endless array of such words. Her Republican colleagues, rather than stand and applaud, should recognise that and act upon it. There are people who spread hatred and prejudice and there are those who enable the spread of hatred and prejudice. Not just Greene, but also the Republicans who have failed to condemn her are enablers. They will ultimately bear responsibility for the consequences.

They will, but they will probably never care.

Congress is discussing doing an investigation on the riot.

Democrats and Republicans have made fresh calls for a 9/11-style bipartisan commission to investigate how rioters were able to breach the Capitol on 6 January. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, a commission reviewed how the incidents were possible and laid out plans to prevent them being repeated. Now politicians on both sides of the aisle have called for the deadly Capitol siege to be given the same treatment.

In a way the answer seems obvious – the Capitol is not normally fenced off and guarded by soldiers, so it wasn’t that day. On the other hand that day wasn’t a normal one, what with Trump’s well-advertised plan to do a speech telling his fans how badly he’d been cheated, so maybe the investigation is not so much into how rioters were able to breach the Capitol as into why the Capitol wasn’t made impossible to breach.

Then again some people think there’s nothing much to investigate.

Ah good point. Cool then. They haven’t insurrected since, so they never will.

Crisis in Genderland:

Gender studies has become a lucrative and prestigious topic at the world’s leading institutions and universities have moved to lure its scholars, not least because of the insights they cast right across teaching and research.

What kind of insights? Into how gendered conventions keep women subordinated? Or into how much fun it is for men to say they are women and join their fellow women in sports and women-only prizes?

St Andrews is to part company with Alison Duncan Kerr, an American philosopher who is director of its Institute for Gender Studies (StAIGS).

People have signed a petition to keep her, the university has said calm down.

Kerr’s redundancy has had resonance, sparking a campaign called StandwithAlison which has attracted specific support from some of the biggest names in gender studies.

Which is like saying some of the biggest names in thumbtack marketing.

Professor Kirstein Rummery of the University of Stirling added: “At a time when gender studies and interdisciplinary feminist scholarship are badly needed, growing in popularity and under epistemic attack, this seems a questionable decision from a prestigious institution that should be leading the way.”

But is gender studies adjacent to and allied with feminist scholarship? Or is it their opposite and enemy?

Supporters of Kerr – including students and colleagues – say she is the guiding light behind the institute and its MLitt masters degree. They say that two men who will now teach the course, while experts in their own field, do not have a background in the subject.

There are fears that stuffy conservatism will mean gender studies – which cross women’s, men’s and queer studies – might end up staying in name only. 

They prefer their conservatism to be unstuffy.

Michael Beschloss is doing a “Remember” today.