I see I’m not the only one.

There are a lot more like that. A lot more.

Remember: Pence thinks, and says, that it’s a bad thing that Democrats (or the left more broadly) “want to make poverty comfortable.”

Meanwhile…

Uncomfortable poverty for them, publicly funded flights to Vail for him. Lockdown for them, vacations in Vail for him.

The cops are waiting at the exit.

Come noon on 20 January 2021, Trump and his inner circle will be private citizens again. Devoid of legal immunity, stripped of the air of invincibility, they become fair game for federal and local law enforcement alike. The potential for prison hovers over them like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Cyrus Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney, is circling Trump and his business. Eric Trump has testified at a court-ordered deposition conducted by New York’s attorney general. As for federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York, they labeled Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of Michael Cohen. The statute of limitations has not expired.

So the Trumps have to worry about New York the state along with New York the city. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District won’t be able to do anything if Trump pardons All The Trumps…unless it turns out that he can’t pardon himself, which many legal experts say he indeed can’t.

Giuliani is also on the list, and it pisses him off. Why? Did he think he had some kind of special dispensation?

Very soon now we’ll be able to stop thinking about Trump.

The justice department and the Federal Election Commission may soon want to talk to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, about his role in the Trump re-election campaign.

Reportedly, Kushner was a driving force in establishing a shell company, American Made Media Consultants, which made shrouded payments to Trump family members and friends. Indeed, Kushner purportedly directed Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, John Pence, the vice-president’s nephew, and the campaign’s chief financial officer to serve on the shell company board.

…

In the end, AMMC spent nearly half of the campaign’s war chest, with payments going to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend, and Lara Trump, who is now contemplating a Senate run in North Carolina. Suffice to say, the legality of this opaque arrangement is unclear.

Three House Democrats have requested investigations by the Department of Justice and the FEC. Without a pardon, Jared’s fate will rest in the hands of a Biden DoJ. Said differently, Hunter Biden is not the only person with a troubled road ahead.

It would be funny if Prince Jared managed to annoy Trump enough between now and the last day that the pardon would not arrive.

The princess wants us to know that she really really cares about poor people.

Remember that story her friend from school told about her (cough) lack of interest in poor people?

In the most scathing passage, Ohrstrom claimed that in their mid-20s she recommended to her friend the book Empire Falls, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Richard Russo about working-class characters in a small town in Maine.

“‘Ly, why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?’ I remember Ivanka saying,” she wrote. “‘What part of you thinks I would be interested in this?’”

Not that it isn’t obvious without the story. Her “business” was selling expensive tat, her “work” for Daddy’s business involved marketing expensive real estate, her presentation of self is entirely Disney Princess. She probably jingles when she walks.

The latest gotcha – ooooooh Obama pardoned lots more.

The issue isn’t quantity – although lots of a bad thing is worse than a little, so quantity is part of the issue in that sense. But in the rest of the senses it isn’t.

What a Maroon directed us to Politifact from last February.

The latest round of clemency grants from President Donald Trump sparked new criticism that he was abusing his expansive pardon powers by skirting the normal review process and favoring white-collar criminals who were prominent and well-connected.

But two days after the Feb. 18 announcements, a Facebook post implied that it was Barack Obama, not Trump, who had abused the largely unchecked pardon power.

The post said:

“Pardons — Obama: 1,927, Trump: 26. And Trump is abusing that power?” 

The raw numbers are not the only variable.

In his eight years in office, Obama issued 1,927 clemency actions. The vast majority of them — nearly 90% — were sentence commutations granted to ordinary individuals, based on a policy of criminal justice reform in drug cases, and specific recommendations from the U.S. Justice Department. Trump has acted outside the Justice Department process in granting clemency to a few well-known white-collar offenders.

It’s not a secret that criminal justice reform in drug cases is desperately needed. It’s not much more of a secret that Trump has zero interest in that kind of reform, and if you asked him about it he would shout that the sentences should be longer and harsher and imposed on more of Them.

It’s also not a secret that the US imprisons more people per capita than any other country on the planet. More than China, more than Russia, more than anyone. That’s not a proud statistic.

The prison system in the South functioned as a replacement for slavery for decades after Reconstruction was defeated by resurgent white supremacists (supremacist in the most literal sense). Prisoners did the work that slaves had done, in the cotton fields and the pine woods that yielded profitable turpentine. They did the work and they didn’t benefit from owners’ preference to keep them alive to protect the owners’ investment – they died like flies.

So, yes, Obama had good reasons to use the power of the pardon generously. Trump has different reasons, which are not so good.

“Obama acted in each case pursuant to a report and recommendation from the Justice Department, which came to him through an orderly and regular process that gave everyone a fair chance of success,” said Margaret Love, a lawyer specializing in executive clemency who was a Justice Department pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997. “By contrast, Trump has almost totally ignored the established DOJ process, and acted pursuant to informal and unofficial recommendations from friends, celebrities, media personalities, business colleagues, etc.”

The Trump White House has noted the achievements and the prominent supporters of people whom Trump granted clemency.

In announcing Trump’s 11 most recent actions, the White House cited the election of Edward DeBartolo Jr. to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as an NFL team owner and his charitable contributions; called Michael Milken one of America’s greatest financiers and noted his philanthropic work; and praised former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for tutoring and mentoring fellow prisoners. 

DeBartolo, whose family controls the San Franscisco 49ers, was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to probation for failing to report a felony regarding an extortion attempt. Milken pleaded guilty to securities violations in 1989 and served two years in prison in the early 1990s. Both were pardoned.

Blagojevich received a commutation after spending eight years in prison for a scheme to sell an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat Obama vacated in 2008.

To sum up: saying “Obama pardoned MORE” as a gotcha is disgusting.

In today’s round of disgusting pardons –

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including ones for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.

Appears to be? He either is or isn’t. It’s a matter of fact, not speculation. He’s already pardoned a lot more than normal, hasn’t he? And he has 27 days left.

Also make that “no inhibition,” not “little.”

Business advice: don’t insure the Catholic church. Really, don’t do that.

The Catholic Church’s private insurer spent more than $58 million paying out the victims of sexual abuse last year and the company is being forced to raise fresh capital and liquidate investments to cover a future compensation bill worth at least another $238 million.

Not profitable.

Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) has posted nearly a $250 million loss as it struggles to meet a wave of new claims in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

More business advice: don’t invest in their stock.

CCI, which insures Catholic parishes, religious institutions, welfare groups, aged care facilities and schools across Australia for incidents of property damage, loss and injury, has also covered compensation and legal costs for sexual abuse committed in many church organisations since 1969.

Whoops.

The ballooning current and anticipated costs mean CCI is moving to liquidate investments, to raise capital to meet what it now expects to be at least $238 million in future sexual abuse payouts.

It also stopped paying dividends and distributions to the Catholic organisations that are shareholders in the non-profit, cutting off an important source of income for some of these entities.

Among its shareholders are the Australian Episcopal Conference of the Roman Catholic Church, archdioceses of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and the Jesuits, Marists, De La Salle Brothers and Sisters of Mercy.

It was a good racket for a long time but now that all the sexual abuse of children is out in the open…the money is going far far away.

And for the clincher? Most of that money isn’t going to the victims at all, but to…oh you know where it’s going.

The Age and the Herald have previously revealed that only 28 per cent of the $34.27 million the church spent on compensation under the Melbourne Response scheme from 1996 to 2014 went to victims, with the rest spent on legal fees and administrative expenses.

Ave Maria.

Trump has been casually ruining the lives of people who administer elections. One guy is suing.

An election systems worker driven into hiding by death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against “President” Donald Trump’s campaign, two of its lawyers and some conservative media figures and outlets.

Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.

His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media Newsmax and One America News Network.

Dominion is fighting back too.

Dominion, which provided vote-counting equipment to several states, has denied accusations that it switched Trump votes in Biden’s favor, and no evidence has emerged to back those charges up.Dominion and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, have begun to fight back against being named in baseless conspiracy theories. After legal threats were made, Fox News Channel and Newsmax in recent days have aired retractions of some claims made on their networks.

“Ok ok ok we lied, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus.”

Coomer told The Associated Press earlier this month that right-wing websites posted his photo, home address and details about his family. Death threats began almost immediately.

Just standing operating procedure, right?

The Ego-Pardons:

Every president’s pardon list contains some self-serving or controversial picks—think of Clinton’s pardon for Marc Rich, or Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence to time served.

But every other president in American history has chosen some worthy recipients of executive clemency as well, some reformed souls whose cases sang out for pardons. That’s because every other American president has been a more or less normal human being. And normal human beings have some concept of justice.

I don’t think that’s true about the more or less normal human being, actually. Nixon wasn’t normal. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t all that normal. Lincoln wasn’t. Coolidge wasn’t. Andrew Johnson wasn’t. Kennedy wasn’t. Most are, probably, but there are definitely some outliers.

But Trump, of course, is in a class by himself. There’s not all that normal and then there’s stark staring psychopathic.

Trump is incapable of comprehending abstract virtues like justice. A glance at the list of his pardons so far just screams ME, ME, ME. There’s Arpaio, whose rabid followers Trump aimed to please, and billionaire Conrad Black, convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, who is a voluble Trump supporter. Dinesh D’Souza and Bernard Kerik also pass the shameless toady test.

…

What about Alice Marie Johnson, who received a life sentence for a first-time drug offense (and a handful of others whose cases she highlighted)? Yes, that was straight up justice. And it would deserve approbation except for one thing that slides it into the tabloid category: Trump issued the pardons after high-profile lobbying by Kim Kardashian West.

And we can be quite sure he would not have done so at the behest of some do-gooding bleeding-heart prison reform advocate. It’s a Kardashian or nothing, with him.

The only time Trump expands his self-regard to others is, revealingly, when it comes to police and war criminals—a pattern he continued this week. He sees them not as distortions of honor but as “strong” and virtuous. Inevitably, he complains that they are “very badly treated.” He misses the irony.

His only disinterested altruism is directed at mass murderers.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Law and order.

Even if you got rid of the pardon power, there are still a host of ways that a sitting president can effectively immunize his supporters and lackeys from federal criminal consequences. He can simply order his Attorney General to order the U.S. Attorneys not to bring any such charges or to dismiss ones that have been brought. This is essentially what Trump first attempted with Flynn — of course, being Trump he arguably botched it by waiting until Flynn had already pled guilty, so Judge Sullivan was at least entertaining the possibility that the dismissal might not be legally effective. In fact, the “unitary executive” theorists would say that Trump can just order it directly without going through the AG. And of course, even if the AG balks, the president can fire the AG and find a new (acting) AG who will do it — as Nixon did in the Saturday Night Massacre.

A pardon at least has the virtue of being a clear public act that has to be explicitly documented, while more subtle means of thwarting prosecutions can be done without a paper trail. And abolishing pardons would also be throwing out some babies with the bathwater, as there really are situations where pardons and commutations are good things.

Nor do I think you can solve it by strictly forbidding the president to ever give orders to prosecutors or fire them. You can’t have unelected prosecutors running around answerable to nobody — what if some Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney refuses to resign in January and starts filing charges against Biden and Hillary and Dominion based on every dumb Kraken/QAnon/etc. conspiracy theory?

I’m not one of those people who thinks the U.S. Constitution is a work of eternal genius that cannot be improved upon — quite the opposite. It’s kind of amazing it’s held up this long as well as it has, and there’s a reason that countries forming new constitutions don’t look to it as a model very much any more. But on this issue, I think that someone should have the power to pardon, and I think that if Congress has abandoned its duty to rein in a president’s abuses of power, and the voters have abandoned their duty to punish GOP Senators who abandoned that duty, then there’s a more fundamental problem at work.

tl;dr version: Kent Brockman of The Simpsons was right. “Democracy simply doesn’t work.”

Trump’s pardon of the Blackwater murderers is not universally popular.

The UN Human Rights Office warned that the pardons would serve to embolden others to commit similar crimes.

The father of a nine-year boy who died said Mr Trump “broke my life again”.

It was an example of following that awful slogan “Do it to them before they do it to you.”

The story told to me by eyewitnesses followed a familiar pattern: in the heavy traffic a frightened and inexperienced driver ignored warnings to stop, and carried on towards a convoy of American officials protected by Blackwater agents.

Several witnesses insisted that the contractors had panicked and opened fire indiscriminately. Among those who died was a nine-year-old boy who was sitting in the back of his father’s car and was hit in the head.

Again and again during the war in Iraq I witnessed lesser versions of the Nisoor Square incident, when American soldiers and contractors assumed they were being fired on, and retaliated in devastating and often uncontrolled fashion.

But Nisoor Square had a particularly powerful effect on Iraqi opinion which persists to this day.

By pardoning the four men involved, President Trump has reignited the hatred and resentment caused by the incident.

Trump feeds on hatred and resentment. It’s what gives him life.

It’s dear “Sophie-Grace” again, philosopher and trans laydee. Remember the bright blue strappy shoes?

What “special gifts” do trans people have?

While you’re researching that, I’ll point out that Sophie-Grace formerly Timothy is marginalizing and demonizing JK Rowling, who is actually a woman as opposed to notionally one, so more vulnerable to violence than Sophie-Grace is. I get increasingly tired of men claiming to be marginalized and demonized and tragically vulnerable while in the very act of Doing It To Her.

James Kirkup at the Spectator dissects that reckless BBC article, starting by quoting the Samaritans’ advice on how to report on suicide:

Steer clear of presenting suicidal behaviour as an understandable response to a crisis or adversity. This can contribute to unhelpful and risky normalising of suicide as an appropriate response to distress.’

And:

‘Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.’

Yet the BBC quoted people doing exactly those things.

Then he points out that the Tavistock itself says suicidality in its clients is the same as that of other “young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services.” Then he points out that the Tavistock itself has found no improvement “in mood or psychological wellbeing using standardised psychological measures.”

Yet the BBC article treated the ruling as a dire emergency for the Tavistock’s clients. That doesn’t add up.

In summary, the country’s leading suicide prevention charity tells journalists not to ‘normalise’ suicide, especially among young people, by presenting it as an understandable or inevitable response to crisis. The country’s leading medical authority on transgender young people says they are not at unusual risk of suicide, and called suggestions to the contrary unhelpful. The same clinic’s evidence shows that the use of puberty blocking medication does not improve the mental health of trans children.

So about that BBC article –

The third paragraph of the story says this:

‘Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.’

Doctors, eh? That’s quite a thing to report. If ‘doctors’ are indeed saying that a court ruling could ’cause’ children to commit suicide, that’s surely something that should be reported, in the public interest. So who are these doctors?

The first is the anonymous clinician. The second is Adrian Harrop, who is quoted saying

‘It makes me terribly worried that there is now nothing there for those children, and nothing that can be done to help them. Parents are being left at a point where they’re having to struggle to cope with these children who are in a real state of distress and anxiety. Sadly, there is a very real risk of seeing more suicides.’

Dr Harrop is a GP in Liverpool. He has a record of expressing strong opinions on transgender issues via social media. What he does not have is a history of publishing peer-reviewed medical research on mental health and self-harm among trans children. Nor has he worked as a clinician at a clinic such as GIDS. Yet the BBC deems his speculation about child suicide more worthy of reporting than the views of experts such as Polly Carmichael, head of the GIDS and a world-recognised authority in the care of trans children.

And that’s putting it mildly. Harrop has more than a record of expressing strong opinions on transgender issues via social media, he also has a record of shouting at and bullying and “reporting” feminist women who dispute his claims. He has a record of doing that energetically and repeatedly and downright obsessively; he’s a very nasty piece of work. But the BBC (in the person of Ben Hunte) saw fit to quote him rather than people with professional understanding of the subject.

Then the BBC cites a letter from “GenderGP” which complains about the ruling and does the obligatory warning of “self-harm and suicide.”

What the BBC does not report about GenderGP is that it is based outside the UK, since the two doctors who founded it were both suspended by the General Medical Council for breaking UK medical rules.

Here, I offer another summary: the BBC reported that ‘doctors’ say a court ruling halting the use of puberty blockers could ’cause’ children to commit suicide, on the basis of unevidenced assertions from a non-specialist medic and disgraced doctors who make money selling such drugs. It did so without reporting the views of actual experts that such narratives about suicide are misleading and potentially harmful.

And this isn’t random people burbling on Twitter or Redditt, it’s the BBC. The call is coming from inside the house.

He too then notes the failure of the BBC to mention the suicide claims it removed from the article.

In other words, the BBC reported yesterday that a court ruling could cause young people to commit suicide. Today it no longer says that. Such a correction is welcome, of course, but I can’t help thinking that such a fundamental change in the premise of the article warrants at least a clear public acknowledgment, if not outright deletion.

Especially since the current version of the article still has Harrop and “Gender GP” making the suicide threat.

Times journalist Janice Turner points out obfuscation by the BBC:

Oh really. How sly.

Let’s compare a passage from the first version to the new one.

Amended version:

The NHS gender identity service is seeking leave to appeal against a High Court ruling that restricts children under 16 from accessing “puberty-blocking” drugs.

The NHS service says the move harms young people with gender dysphoria.

Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could put already vulnerable trans teens at risk.

Original version:

The NHS gender identity service is appealing against a High Court ruling that restricts children under 16 from accessing “puberty-blocking” drugs.

The NHS service says the move harms young people with gender dysphoria.

Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.

The change: “the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives” is now “the ruling could put already vulnerable trans teens at risk.” That’s a large and substantive change, which the BBC is carefully not admitting it made.

On the other hand they still let an anonymous clinician and Adrian Harrop rant about suicide.

David Smith at the Guardian on Trump’s latest dive into squalor:

Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heards worked as security guards for Blackwater, owned by Erik Prince, a prominent supporter of Trump and brother of his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. All were serving long prison terms for a 2007 massacre of 14 unarmed civilians in Baghdad.

After their trial in 2014, Ronald Machen Jr, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said: “These Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns, and grenade launchers on innocent men, women, and children. Today they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families.”

The pardoning of the four led political opponents and legal commentators, even those who thought they had grown immune to Trump outrage, to reach for words like “disgusting” and “grotesque”. With just 29 days left in office his burn-it-all-down brazenness knows no bounds.

He also pardoned Chris Collins, imprisoned for making false statements to the FBI and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and Duncan Hunter, who admitted misusing campaign finance funds. Collins and Hunter were the first two congressmen to endorse Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Meanwhile there are I don’t know how many thousands of people – mostly black of course – serving life sentences for selling drugs.

So much for “drain the swamp” and “law and order”. Research by Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard University, found that 88% of the 45 pardons or commutations that Trump had granted before Tuesday helped someone personally associated with him or benefited him politically.

…

The pardon power is something of a quirk, more redolent of a medieval monarchy than a constitutional republic. Perhaps that is why Trump finds it so attractive as he enters full King George III meltdown with America slipping from his grasp.

But Trump doesn’t have porphyria.

Of course he did.

President Donald Trump pardoned four former Blackwater mercenaries on Tuesday who had been convicted for their role in the Nisour Square massacre that left 14 people dead in Baghdad in 2007.

The killing of innocent civilians, including two young boys, sparked international outrage and public scrutiny into the use of private military companies, like Blackwater, providing armed fighters for US wars and conflicts.

Nicholas Slatten, Paul Alvin Slough, Evan Shawn Liberty, and Dustin Laurent Heard were convicted in the deadly shooting.

During the trial for Slough, Liberty, and Heard, federal prosecutors argued in 2015 that the men should have received harsh sentences for their roles, stating that they had “shown no remorse for their actions.”

“Indeed, the defendants have not accepted responsibility for their criminal actions whatsoever and, to this day, have denied any wrongdoing,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

But Trump knows better.

“The pardon of these four veterans is broadly supported by the public,” the statement from the White House read. “Mr. Slatten, Mr. Slough, Mr. Liberty, and Mr. Heard have a long history of service to the Nation.”

The White House statement released by the White House announcing the full pardons made no mention of the number of civilians killed — 14 — or the number of innocent people injured — 17 — in the shooting, or that it was found that the contractors started firing without provocation.

“The situation turned violent, which resulted in the unfortunate deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians,” the statement read.

That is, the mercenaries opened fire on Iraqi civilians. Also they’re not “veterans,” they’re mercenaries. I don’t think real veterans like to see amateurs called by that name.

The four men had all been working under the private contracting company Blackwater, founded by Erik Prince, a wealthy American defense contractor and supporter of Trump’s. His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the Trump administration’s education secretary.

The four men were serving as security escorts for the State Department in Iraq in 2007. When the four-car convoy approached Nisour Square, the contractors began firing into the crowd for about 20 minutes.

In court, the contractors argued they had come under fire in the square; however, evidence suggested that the men didn’t face any fire in the shooting but had instead been firing automatic weapons and sending grenades into the crowd of civilians.

But Trump knows better.

The BBC has a shockingly bad and reckless article by LGBT correspondent Ben Hunte on the Tavistock ruling.

The NHS gender identity service is appealing against a High Court ruling that restricts children under 16 from accessing “puberty-blocking” drugs.

The NHS service says the move harms young people with gender dysphoria.

Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.

And trans young people have been giving their reaction, with one calling the ruling “honestly terrifying”.

That’s the reckless bit. It’s widely agreed that it’s a very bad idea to report “X will cause Ys to commit suicide” this way, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We get eleven paragraphs on a 14-year-old who attempted suicide, full of despair and preference for death, which is just the way journalists are told not to report on the subject. All this is to underline the claim that the ruling is a threat to children and that puberty blockers are not.

A clinician who currently works within the NHS GIDS, told the BBC her patients are now being left alone to deal with distress.

“The young trans people I’m talking to now are experiencing deeply distressing mental health problems,” she says.

“To be a young trans person nowadays requires a bigger fight than ever, but most of the trans people I see do not have any fight left in them.”

The clinician wanted to remain anonymous, because of the backlash that could come as a result of her speaking out.

She says: “I know of several young people who have tried to take their lives, some successfully, and that was before these legal challenges which will only slow down and block our services even more.”

There it is again. The clinician is not so much “speaking out” as making wild and reckless suicide threats on behalf of her patients.

Dr Adrian Harrop, a GP from Liverpool who has defended the right of children to begin transitioning, says trans young people have now had “the rug pulled from underneath them”.

“It makes me terribly worried that there is now nothing there for those children, and nothing that can be done to help them.

“Parents are being left at a point where they’re having to struggle to cope with these children who are in a real state of distress and anxiety. Sadly, there is a very real risk of seeing more suicides,” he adds.

Harrop is a GP but he doesn’t know better than to promote suicide this way. The whole article is one long suicide-promotion. The BBC seems to have lost its mind.

In a letter seen exclusively by the BBC, GenderGP – one of the only private healthcare providers for transgender people in the UK – calls on NHS England’s Medical Director for Specialist Services, James Palmer, to take urgent action.

The letter asks him to provide “interim solutions to prevent harm”. It adds: “The mental health implications of this cannot be underestimated, and the risk of self-harm and suicide must be acknowledged.”

That’s the last para; suicide is almost the last word.

Responses are rolling in.

Pence said things at a conservative student event called Turning Point USA today, COVID be damned.

One of the things he said is that Democrats want to make poor people more comfortable.

He says it beginning at 1:29.

It’s pretty staggering that he feels happy saying that the enemy party wants to make poor people more comfortable. What does Pence want? What does his party want? Poor people homeless, eating out of garbage cans, sick, dying young?

I consulted Google, and it appears that he’s said variations on it before, including saying that Dems want to make poverty more comfortable. That provides a hint toward how Republicans make this a cheerful doctrine: if you make poverty as uncomfortable and lethal as possible then poor people will stop being so stupid about it and be rich instead.

Here’s one reason that’s horseshit: rich people get rich via the labor of poor people. The lower the wages the more money for The Rich People. Poor people are not poor because poverty is so damn comfortable, it’s because rich people suppress wages every way they can.

What Pence of course means by “Democrats want to make rich people poorer and poor people more comfortable” is that the left, and some Democrats, want to reduce the massive equality gap in the US. Yes, oddly enough, we do want people to get decent pay for their work, and support when they need it, and if that means The Moneybags Family don’t get to buy their fifth Vacation Home in Aspen, so be it.

Female athletes stab female athletes in the back.

So in the future there won’t be any Billy Jean Kings and Megan Rapinoes. All the stars of women’s sports will be men who say they are women.

It’s all in the angle of the head. Glinner on that Magic Moment:

It’s one of the most magical moments in a young transwoman’s life, when she tilts her head to the side and instantly becomes a woman. Who would have thought that rotating your head ever so slightly gave instant access to women’s changing rooms, sports and women-of-the-year lists.

The same people who knew that duck-face can work the same magic.

Lower right needs more head tilt though.