They were what?

“A federal health agency halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included.”

They…you…what…

They can’t even do things in a non-criminal way when there’s no need for the criminality!

“Listen up, Santa dude – promote the vaccine or we’ll burn your house down – no, wait, wrong script – promote the vaccine and we’ll put you at the head of the line.”

“No need, Mister Ambassador, I’m happy to promote the vaccine.”

“Listen here, you, take the deal or we’ll burn your house down!”

The White House chief of staff is fine with all this coronavirus-defying:

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows defended Vice President Pence’s decision to continue traveling and campaigning despite his exposure to staff who have tested positive for COVID-19, saying Sunday that Pence is exempt from CDC guidelines because he is “essential personnel.”

But is campaigning essential activity?

Meadows told CNN that “we are not going to control the pandemic,” dismissing the notion that the appropriate COVID policy should be to “quarantine all of America.” Instead, Meadows argued, the focus should be on developing vaccines and therapeutics “to give Americans the relief that this is not a death sentence.”

And in the meantime it’s fine to infect people by the thousands.

MEADOWS: “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas — “

JAKE TAPPER: “Why not get control of the pandemic?”

MEADOWS: “Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu.”

TAPPER: “But why not make efforts to contain it?”

MEADOWS: “Well we are making efforts to contain it.”

TAPPER: “By running all over the country and not wearing a mask? That’s what the vice president is doing.”

He’s essential activity!

So Pence’s staff is riddled with coronavirus.

At least five people in Vice President Mike Pence’s orbit have tested positive for coronavirus in recent days, including chief of staff Marc Short and outside adviser Marty Obst, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.

…

Despite the slew of coronavirus cases around him, Pence — who is the head of the White House’s coronavirus task force — is not quarantining, as per US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Instead, he plans to continue traveling and campaigning in the final stretch to Election Day.

Because, you know, the hell with CDC guidelines, the hell with safety, the hell with everything except the self-interest of Trump and his dummy.

The developments raise new questions about safety protocols and transparency within the White House as the pandemic has killed more than 224,000 Americans.

Questions like: “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The news comes just over a week before Election Day amid a blitz of campaign stops for Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, including the vice president’s trips to Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the last week.

Pandemic or no pandemic! Skyrocketing rate of new infections or not! Winning is all!

“Today, Marc Short, Chief of Staff to the Vice President, tested positive for COVID-19, began quarantine and assisting in the contact tracing process,” Pence’s press secretary Devin O’Malley said in a statement Saturday. “Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for COVID-19 today, and remain in good health.”

The statement continued, “While Vice President Pence is considered a close contact with Mr. Short, in consultation with the White House Medical Unit, the Vice President will maintain his schedule in accordance with the CDC guidelines for essential personnel.”

Uh huh. I’m sure the CDC guidelines say that campaigning for office is essential and well worth infecting thousands of people.

As President Donald Trump returned to Washington shortly after midnight from campaign appearances in Ohio, he said he had heard about Short’s diagnosis.

“He’s going to be fine. But he’s quarantining,” Trump said.

Typical Trump. He doesn’t know that Short is going to be fine; he has no way of knowing that. I’m so sick of people who claim to know things they can’t possibly know.

Short has been seen on the campaign trail actively eschewing the use of masks for months, including earlier this week traveling aboard Air Force Two. Neither Pence nor Short wore a mask on Pence’s trip on Thursday and Friday. As chief of staff to Pence, Short has been a key aide involved with the US coronavirus response. He has been reported to have advocated for an economy-first approach to the pandemic.

That is, a let-the-pandemic-rage approach to the pandemic. From the people in charge of the pandemic. Brilliant.

Short was a driving force against following the advice of the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on the pandemic, a source familiar with discussions inside the coronavirus task force told CNN. Short would routinely push back on Fauci during task force meetings, believing the doctor’s concerns about Covid-19 were overblown, the source said. That attitude was prevalent throughout much of the Pence team, according to the source.

Well it’s easy to see why they would think Fauci’s concerns were overblown, if they never ever looked at the numbers.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidance that says people should stay home for 14 days after having contact with a person who has Covid-19.

Yebbut they’re just civil servants, who should probably all be fired.

Despite Pence being in close contact with Short as recently as Friday, the vice president plans to continue campaigning. Late Saturday, the vice president’s office released his schedule for Sunday, which includes more travel and remarks at a campaign rally in North Carolina.

Remember: this is the guy in charge of the coronavirus task force. I guess that means in charge of making sure it doesn’t do anything.

This one really struck a nerve. Not in a good way.

Sands is here for you, but not so here that it will call you a mother instead of a “birthing parent” (or a father instead of a “non-birthing parent”).

The replies are genuinely painful to read.

Ok…

Commence piling on. If love, respect and humanity should be the bedrock of society then why are you calling people bitches? I know it’s hip and everything but what’s it got to do with love respect n humanity?

Also, how does “equality” come into it? What do “pronouns” have to do with equality?

In reality, nothing. In the jargon-world these two apparently inhabit, part of “equality” is bespoke pronouns and forcing everyone else to use those bespoke pronouns. How they get there, though, remains obscure.

And then from the Jason Michael tweet, what does treating other human beings with love, dignity and respect have to do with pronouns?

In reality, nothing. In the jargon-world these two apparently inhabit, it’s dignity and respect and even love to use bespoke third-person pronouns that don’t match the sex of the bespoke pronoun-haver. See? It’s a touch confusing and remote, isn’t it.

Also, by the way, why is it so often “love” that gets dragged in along with respect? I don’t recall feminism ever demanding “love” from the world at large. If anything feminism has always wanted a little less “love” (and a lot less groping) and more respect. Demanding “love” is bizarre, because social justice is social, not personal. Justice, equality, fairness, rights – none of those are about “love,” and they can’t possibly depend on them, because nobody can possibly “love” everyone, just because of a command or a principle or a movement. Love is a big step too far. We get to have rights and justice even if we’re not lovable; they’re not earned, they’re rights.

I wonder if this weird mission-creep is connected to the way trans-activism is so heavily tilted toward trans women. I wonder if it’s connected to the way trans women are necessarily self-conscious about being womany in a way that women mostly are not, because we just are women, whether we fit the stereotypes or not. I wonder if these trans women and their “allies” are thinking of women as all squishy and gooey and sentimental and thus in need of being told “we love you” all the time, and thus in trying to be womany themselves they beg us to “love” them, just as women normally do.

Except we don’t.

We don’t demand love, and we don’t answer to “bitches.”

Complicated, aren’t we.

Alarm bells:

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S newest executive order, signed without fanfare this week, could prove one of his most insidious.

The directive from the White House, issued late Wednesday, sounds technical: creating a new “Schedule F” within the “excepted service” of the federal government for employees in policymaking roles, and directing agencies to determine who qualifies. Its implications, however, are profound and alarming. It gives those in power the authority to fire more or less at will as many as tens of thousands of workers currently in the competitive civil service, from managers to lawyers to economists to, yes, scientists.

Wo. That’s a terrible plan. It dynamites the whole point of having a civil service (the hilarities of Yes Minister notwithstanding).

This week’s order is a major salvo in the president’s onslaught against the cadre of dedicated civil servants whom he calls the “deep state” — and who are really the greatest strength of the U.S. government.

The administration grounds its action in the need to rid itself of “poor performers.” Certainly, there’s room for reform to the cumbersome process required to remove those who fall short of standards. But this president’s criteria for determining satisfactory performance begin and end with personal loyalty. The White House admitted last winter to seeking to purge from payrolls those deemed insufficiently reliable — the “bad people,” in Mr. Trump’s words. The protections for career civil servants currently in place at least put some roadblocks on that path, hence this legally dubious plan to erase those protections with a touch of organizational sleight of hand. Not only will politically motivated firing become easier, but it will also be easier to hire those who meet Mr. Trump’s standards: obsequiousness and, more often than not, a lack of qualifications. With no competitive process in place, leaders can appoint whom they please — or rather, who pleases them.

Trump world everywhere. Let’s not do that.

We’re still doing it wrong.

The United States on Friday was approaching a record for the number of new daily coronavirus cases, as a new study warned that the pandemic is set to cause half a million American deaths by February.

…

This means that with cases surging in many states, particularly the upper midwest, what appears to be a third major peak of coronavirus infections in the US could lead to nearly 300,000 people dying in just the next four months.

Compared to over 200,000 in the last eight months – so that’s a huge leap.

The news came as Anthony Fauci, the top public health official on the White House coronavirus taskforce, said Donald Trump has not met with the taskforce “for several months” and the body itself meets less frequently than it did earlier in the pandemic, despite the fact that [the] outbreak is not yet under control.

Well, it’s nice that he’s feeling relaxed about it.

At a campaign rally late on Friday afternoon, Trump instead claimed without evidence that the US was entering the “final turn” of the outbreak.

The final turn into the abyss, that is.

No, bud, that’s not the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the fire in the furnace.

In fact the University of Washington warned that the situation will be even more disastrous if states continue to ease off on measures designed to restrict the spread of the virus, such as the shuttering of certain businesses and social distancing edicts. If states wind down such protections, the death toll could top 1 million people in America by 28 February, the UW study found.

Too bad we have a president who tells states to wind down those protections.

Speaking of the princess…she’s sharing Trump’s idiotic “cleanliness” interpretation of environmentalism.

“Pristine” ffs. It’s the comprehension of a resort-owner. There must be NO DIRT anywhere. We need CRYSTAL CLEAR WATER and PRISTINE OCEANS AND BEACHES.

The hell we do. Sterile environments are by definition hostile to life. Biology needs a lot of muck, and it generates a lot of muck. Princess Ivanka makes it sound as if we should bleach everything. (Ask the coral reefs how that’s working out.)

I cannot wait to see the back of these people.

Hahahahaha Princess Ivanka and Prince Jared are SUING, they are SUING I tell you.

I’m sure they’ll win that suit because how could anyone possibly back up the claim that Princess Barbie is indifferent to the sufferings of people harmed by her criminal murderous daddy?

For the first time ever I feel a twinge of gratitude toward Princess and Prince, for giving us this bit of amusement in dark times.

Why do they keep doing this?

This makes NO sense. Women are the ones subject to sexual violence and harassment and creeping (you know, cameras, peering over the partition, that stuff), not men. Women; not men. It shouldn’t be men who are given the toilets to themselves while women have to share them with men; that is backwards.

Plus the whole…”well we don’t want to push men around because they might punch us, so we’ll just dump it all on you, because if you punch us we can smash all your teeth in.” It’s called bullying; it’s called unfair; it’s called taking advantage.

I wish I’d heard that (or could currently find a recording of it):

Marina sent the perfect question:

Seriously. How can Kate Manne talk about something named “male entitlement” or “male privilege” if she doesn’t know who male people are? How does she know they’re not all trans women but just haven’t worked up the courage to say so yet?

Festival of Ideas blurbs the conversation:

Philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny. She ranges widely across the culture — from the Kavanaugh hearings and ‘Cat Person’ to Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Warren — to show how the idea that a privileged man is tacitly deemed to be owed something is a pervasive problem. Male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women’s pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are ‘unelectable’. The consequences for girls and women are often devastating.

Male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women’s pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are ‘unelectable’ not to mention the ease with which men can announce that they’re trans or non-binary and instantly shed all trace of privilege and instead become the victims of those monsters, women who don’t believe men can become women.

As Manne shows, toxic masculinity is not just the product of a few bad actors; we are all implicated, conditioned as we are by the currents of our time. She sheds new light on gender and power and offers a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to be cared for, believed and valued.

Unless they’re TERFs. Or Karens. Or both.

Aw, Bibi won’t play.

Speaking to “Bibi” on the phone in the Oval Office earlier today, Trump tried to goad Netanyahu into attacking Joe Biden.

“Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?” Trump asked Netanyahu, referring to Biden by an insulting nickname. “You think he would have made this deal? Somehow, I don’t think so.”

Very appropriate. Just what heads of state are supposed to do – try to draw other heads of state into insulting a rival for the office. “Bibi” will have to work with Biden if we succeed in putting a stake through Trump’s gut, but Donnie Two Scoops can’t be bothered with details like that when they’re about other people.

But Netanyahu did not go along with Trump’s attack, instead saying, “Well, Mr President, one thing I can tell you, is, um, uh, we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America, and we appreciate what you have done enormously.”

Peter Tatchell’s determined indifference to the concerns of women – which he names accurately and claims to “sympathize and empathize with” – is breathtaking to see.

More voter suppression from the right-wing Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court has sided with Alabama state officials who banned curbside voting intended to accommodate individuals with disabilities and those at risk from the COVID-19 virus.

The high court issued its order Wednesday night, without explanation, over the dissent of the court’s three liberal justices.

At issue was the decision by the Alabama secretary of state to ban counties from allowing curbside voting, even for those voters with disabilities and those for whom COVID-19 is disproportionately likely to be fatal.

People like that won’t be voting for Trump so…

Tatchell reminds us he doesn’t give a shit about women.

Trans women are at a disadvantage in women’s sport? Really?

This goon. He says it AGAIN – I knew he was going to and flinched in advance and pow, there it was: the crystal clean water again.

But also…starting at 40 seconds, notice the energy with which he calls China filthy, India filthy. We can all see he’s not just thinking about “the air.”

Remember those skeletons in the septic tank at the Catholic-run mother and baby prison [formally “home”] in Tuam? Let’s hush all that kind of thing up until everyone’s dead, ok?

In September, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes said bespoke legislation would be required to safeguard and transfer a database of the mothers and children who were resident in the main mother-and-baby homes.

The bill provided for the database to be sent to Tusla, which raised concerns among former residents of the homes and their families over their ability to access the information held by the Child and Family Agency.

Under a 2004 act, the remaining archives will be sealed for 30 years. Last Friday, the bill passed all stages in the Seanad.

Sorry, archives are sealed! Can’t help you I’m afraid! Next!

The Catholic church is good at this business of sealing its own records so that the victims can’t find the evidence, along with the business of sending rapey priests to a different parish instead of stopping them or doing anything to help their victims.

The Catholic church is an evil institution. Most of the US Supreme Court is Catholic. That’s no accident.

In a statement to RTÉ News after the Dáil vote, Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns said: “I asked the minister on the outset, if he will be considering any of the amendments put forward by TDs that are based on input from survivors and human rights experts? He said no.

…

“We are talking about the most serious kinds of human rights violations – missing children, forced disappearances, illegal adoption and so much more horrific systematic institutional abuse,” she said. “The mother and baby homes commission was formed in light of the discovery of 800 dead children and babies in a misused septic tank,” Ms Cairns added.

“It is sickening that the Minister didn’t consider those affected and then wouldn’t even consider amendments myself and other TDs submitted – amendments based on inputs from survivors and human rights experts,”she said.

Demon God wins another round.

H/t tigger_the_wing

Joining the women-haters club:

The US has today signed an anti-abortion declaration with a group of about 30 largely illiberal or authoritarian governments, after the failure of an effort to expand the conservative coalition.

The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion – and is part of a campaign by Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.

You can’t promote women’s rights while imposing mandatory pregnancy on them. If women can’t say no to having their bodies taken over for nine months then they have no rights.

The “core supporters” of the declaration are Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda, and the 27 other signatories include Belarus (where security forces are currently trying to suppress a women-led protest movement), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya.

Lot of Islamist countries. Funny how Trump hates Muslims when they want to immigrate here but loves them when they’re stamping out women’s rights.

Most of the signatories are among the 20 worst countries to be a woman according to the Women, Peace and Security Index established by Georgetown University.

None of the top twenty countries on the Georgetown index – with the exception of the US (ranked 19th) – has signed the declaration.

The only other European signatory (apart from Belarus and Hungary) is Poland, where the constitutional court approved a near total ban on abortion on Thursday.

It’s shameful. He’s going to be shaming us as much as he can between now and the inauguration.

A virtual signature ceremony was co-hosted by Pompeo and US health and human services secretary, Alex Azar. They portrayed the declaration as a historic moment in a movement to stop abortion being supported as part of reproductive health care, and credited Donald Trump.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has defended the dignity of human life everywhere and always,” Pompeo said. “He has done it like no other president in history. We have mounted an unprecedented defense of the unborn abroad.”

That is, under pussy-grabber Donald Trump the US has done its best to make women captives of their own bodies again. What about the dignity of their lives? It’s not “dignity” to be forced to remain pregnant against your will.

I hope the frat boys get a humiliating defeat in 12 days.

Again with this baffler.

That last one is the baffler. WHY is it their general human rights position that people have a right to have their gender identity recognized? WHY??

What they mean by “gender identity” is “fictional gender that is the opposite of the real one.” We dull-normal people don’t have “gender identities” because we forgot to decide to have one and now it’s too late, we can’t take it seriously. “Gender-identity”=claim to be the sex you aren’t. WHY would people have a “right” to have that recognized? Why why WHY? Nobody ever explains it, they just assert it.

It can’t be a right to force people to agree with your personal lie about yourself. That’s just not workable, or reasonable, or fair. I still don’t understand why venerable human rights organizations are taking the idea so seriously. I’ll never understand it.

What do they mean by “officially recognised for who they are”? The problem is that it’s who they are not. Why is it a moral duty to agree that people are what they are not?

The nonsense about “differential treatment based on their identities” is also gibberish. Why wouldn’t murderers and rapists just say their identities are “murderer” and “rapist” and it’s discrimination to give them differential treatment such as arrest and prosecution and imprisonment.

People have lost their damn minds.

The 60 Minutes interview wasn’t Trump’s to post. CBS allowed the White House to tape it for archival purposes. Trump doesn’t honor agreements. Never do business with Trump.

CBS News on Thursday called out the White House for violating an agreement it had with the network and posting President Trump’s full “60 Minutes” interview online ahead of its Sunday air date.

“The White House’s unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter ’60 Minutes’ from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades,” CBS News said in a statement.

…

CBS News has said the White House recorded the interview alongside the network, but agreed only to use the footage for archival purposes. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the agreement.

In other words Trump and the people who work for him are all cheaters and liars.

The interview began with Stahl asking the President if he was “ready for tough questions.”

Trump replied that he only wanted her to be “fair.”

“But you’re OK with some tough questions?” Stahl asked.

“No, I’m not,” Trump replied.

That’s so Trump. “No! No I don’t want to answer questions that don’t flatter me! No no no no no! You have to flatter me! Everybody does! Bring me two scoops of ice cream!”