From what I can tell so far, a few gender critical women put on a small, socially distanced political discussion in Leeds today. Result: they got arrested.

Yeah, women, eh – what could they have to protest about? Silly bitches.

Trump’s sniggering glee that a journalist reporting on a protest was injured by police is really sticking in my craw. I’m sick of having a psychopath as president, and not only as president but going out and encouraging other people to laugh and cheer at police violence against journalists.

“I remember this guy Velshi,” Trump said. “He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas and he went down. He was down. ‘My knee, my knee.’ Nobody cared, these guys didn’t care, they moved him aside.”

I wonder if that’s what Princess Ivanka means when she says she loves him for being real.

“And they just walked right through. It was the most beautiful thing,” Trump said. “No, because after we take all that crap for weeks and weeks, and you finally see men get up there and go right through them, wasn’t it really a beautiful sight? It’s called law and order.”

No it isn’t, for at least two reasons. One, Velshi wasn’t breaking any law or fomenting any disorder. Two, the law isn’t supposed to just start shooting people for no reason, even with rubber bullets.

In a statement, an MSNBC spokesperson said, “Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy. When the President mocks a journalist for the injury he sustained while putting himself in harm’s way to inform the public, he endangers thousands of other journalists and undermines our freedoms.”

During his live broadcast in May, Velshi and his crew could be seen covering a protest during broad daylight when police began firing tear gas at them.

“There has been no provocation, there was nothing that happened whatsoever,” Velshi said. “The police pulled into this intersection, unprovoked, right into the middle of the crowd, split the crowd, started firing in both directions. They now have fired at us.”

Velshi and his crew quickly moved back, but several minutes later Velshi was struck by a rubber bullet and grasped his knee in visible pain.

And Trump finds that “beautiful” and hilarious, and eggs the crowd on to laugh and rejoice.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh falsely asserted in a statement to CNN on Saturday that Trump was “calling the restoration of peace ‘a beautiful thing,'” despite the President’s clear remarks about Velshi having been captured on video.

Murtaugh’s statement concluded by attacking the media.

I want the grownups back.

A new level of disgusting.

Ali Velshi isn’t sure about the beauty.

He’s already said he’s not going to abide by it.

Now wait just a second here.

On Friday night, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, declared: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

There was an outcry, accusing McConnell of hypocrisy. When the conservative Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, also an election year, McConnell refused to act on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s victory.

McConnell argues this case is different because in 2016 the president was Democratic and the Senate majority was Republican but now the same party controls both. His opposite number, Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, instantly rejected the view.

What are we talking about? “This case is different” in what sense? On the merits, or on the basis of “we can crush you”? On law and precedent and fairness, or on because we can? Obviously the power balance is very different, but the case is not.

Obama wrote in a Medium post: “Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the supreme court before a new president was sworn in.

“A basic principle of the law – and of everyday fairness – is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican senators are now called to apply that standard.”

But Republicans have made it all too clear that they don’t care about rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy. They care about returning women to the prison of unwanted pregnancy, pulverizing the Voting Rights Act, gutting environmental regulations, making the rich ever richer.

“Well you see constable I was filming a video for Snapchat…”

A woman fell out of a moving car on the M25 while leaning out of the window to film a video for Snapchat.

She’s all right so we get to laugh at her.

She’s another Fellini, a Truffaut, a Scorsese. I can’t wait to see the full movie.

More transphobia spotted!

Trans advocate Jayce Carver said she believes Igor Dzaic should bow out of the Ward 7 byelection after his “transphobic” tweet came to light.

“Imagine thinking that to be a woman all you have to do is say you are and get a few surgeries, even though you’re a man,” read one of Dzaic’s tweets. “You must not value real women at all.”

Carver said Dzaic apologized for some of his social media posts, which she said is “kind of too little too late.”

How much do you value real women though, Jayce Carver?

“When you are a politician, you’re supposed to represent the entirety of your community,” said Carver. “Trans-identified people — although we are a small part of the community — we are part of the community.”

Wait, what does that mean?

When you’re a politician, you are supposed to represent everyone in your district or riding or state or whatever it may be, in the sense of working for everyone, doing your best for everyone, using your office to help everyone where necessary, and the like. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to “represent” everyone in the sense of being like everyone (which is impossible), or approving of everyone, or agreeing with everyone, or being uncritical of the views of everyone.

It seems it was Chase Strangio who inspired him.

Well we can’t have that.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail some candidates have spoken publicly about Dzaic’s tweets.

“Many of these posts were uninformed & misleading, and the hurtful language this candidate used in his writing has caused residents of our community great pain,” said candidate Farah El-Hajj in a statement.

There’s the “pain” trope again. Why is it dogma that trans people – mostly trans women i.e. men – are peculiarly subject to pain? Why is it dogma that men who say they are women are vastly more subject to pain than women are? It’s a weird inside-out form of bullying, but bullying it is.

Candidate Howard Weeks is also calling for Dzaic to step away from the byelection race.

“I want to state in no uncertain terms that that spewing this kind of garbage is totally unacceptable and due to the fact that his actions may reflect badly on the other candidates and the race itself I’m calling for him to remove himself as soon as possible,” he said in a statement.

If it had been casual Twitter misogyny, would El-Hajj and Weeks have responded with such vehemence and catastrophizing?

I don’t think so.

Even when pointing out that Rowling’s new novel isn’t all about a trans woman, it’s imperative to put the boot in anyway. After several paragraphs of plot summary to make clear that the minor character who puts on lady-coat and a wig isn’t trans and isn’t the main suspect, the final paragraph gets to the boot.

Perhaps some will still consider this depiction transphobic, given Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views on trans people.

How different that sentence would have been without the “rightly.” Miles less ugly and clumsy, for a start – “Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views” – that is a mess. But substantively – who says “rightly”? I say “wrongly” so now what do we do? It’s not just a simple fact that the criticism of what Rowling said was all “rightly” done. And then there’s something missing: it wasn’t just a matter of criticizing her views, it was a torrent of abuse, much of it misogynist and violent and disgusting. Can we “rightly” criticize that? And then there’s the sloppiness of “views on trans people” without any specifics, which obscures the fact that Rowling didn’t simply shout abuse of trans people, or anything like it.

It is, at best, an utterly tone-deaf decision to include an evil man who cross-dresses after months of pain among trans people and their allies.

There it is again, the emotional blackmail. What pain? It looked to me more like people having a blast abusing a woman. Or if we are going to talk about people’s pain, what about the pain of women who are called names and told to stfu about their own concerns and accused of phobias and labeled Karens and bullied off social media? What about that pain?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87

Fuck fuck fuck

Not all that funny.

I have to say that I find this pretty amusing. After Princeton’s President (like officials of many other colleges) wrote a letter flagellating himself and his University for systemic racism, the U.S. Department of Education has begun investigating Princeton for violating Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The charge is taking federal money for years while purporting to abide by federal nondiscrimination and equal-opportunity standards. If Princeton is indeed rife with “systemic racism” that it hasn’t addressed, then surely they have violated that agreement.

I saw items about it earlier today, and had the same ambivalent reaction.

I get why it’s a little funny, I suppose. I definitely get that it can be cringe-inducing to see presidents of ivy league universities and the like accuse their universities of systemic racism, but at the same time…should we really just assume that there is no such systemic racism? If the “we” in question means white people? Do we just know, for certain, that we recognize it when we see it and instantly leap to stamp it out, leaving the world cleaner and better?

I don’t think we do know that, and I don’t think we should assume it. We should probably also avoid narcissistic displays of self-accusation, but I don’t know that that’s what the Princeton president was doing. (I grew up in Princeton by the way. It’s very very white, and very impressed with itself, and very snooty – at least it was then. That’s Princeton the town, but most people I know who went to the university confirm that the two take their style from each other.)

The thing is, the white majority went along for decade after decade not giving a single thought to systemic racism, or any other kind, and taking the racism around them (us) for granted. The Civil Rights movement started a change in that, but is it finished? Of course it’s not. Trump has dragged us sharply backwards in some ways, with enthusiastic help from Stephen Miller and Don Junior and other assorted shits. The problem isn’t solved or over, so how likely is it that crusty old elite institutions like Princeton have shed all trace of racism? By the way it was much favored by the few [editing to add: pre-Civil War] southern boys who went north for further education – Yale and Harvard were seen as way too Yankee, while Princeton was more relaxed and forgiving…of white boys.

It’s true that I wouldn’t have any idea how to come up with concrete evidence that Princeton is systemically racist – not unless I got some social science training at least – but I don’t think that means I have to assume there absolutely is none. I think the jeering about this is a bit trumpish.

This is amusing because I don’t believe that Princeton is systemically racist, though there may be private instances of racism. And yet the University had to admit deep-seated racism to keep in tune with the Zeitgeist. By so doing, it got itself investigated. It’ll be interesting to see how Princeton plays this one, maintaining that it has a climate of systemic racism but yet doesn’t violate federal statues.

But maybe it’s not quite that simple. Maybe they’re not just “keeping in tune with the Zeitgeist.” Maybe they really do think racism isn’t over yet and therefore they shouldn’t take it for granted that there’s no trace of it at Princeton. Is that out of the question? I’m not seeing it.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh heh heh.

Troubled Blood, the new book from Robert Galbraith aka J K Rowling, has shifted more copies in a day than Lethal White sold in its first week, according to publisher Little, Brown.

Oops.

Aaron Rupar on Trump’s Hymn to White Resentment:

The solution, Trump claimed, is to “restore patriotic education to our schools.” He said he’ll create a new “1776 Commission” to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.”

“Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul,” he added.

What this will end up meaning in practice isn’t clear, and isn’t really important. For Trump, what matters is to signal to racial reactionaries that he’s on their side.

In case they hadn’t already figured that out.

This legacy of racism has tangible consequences. Black Americans have lower life expectancies and make less than whites, even adjusted for education. (And adjusting for education is important, because in this area as well Blacks fare worse than whites.

See also: police violence, rates of incarceration, length of sentences, and the like.

But instead of even paying lip service to structural racism, Trump has consistently denied that such a thing exists. In a July interview with CBS, for instance, Trump responded to a straightforward question about why he thinks Black people continue to be killed by police by lashing out — at the questioner.

“And so are white people. So are white people,” Trump said. “What a terrible question to ask.”

But it’s not a terrible question to ask, Mister Narcissist, because racism is real and does make a difference, or a million differences.

Um…

Mister Stupid say that man is bad man, he doesn’t say anteefuh is bad people who do bad things, he must be bad man.

The Voting Rights Act? What’s that? Never heard of it.

North Carolina Is Already Rejecting Black Voters’ Mail-In Ballots More Often Than White Voters’

In North Carolina, absentee ballots have already been sent back and the state has been updating statistics on those ballots daily. As of September 17, Black voters’ ballots are being rejected at more than four times the rate of white voters, according to the state’s numbers.¹ Black voters have mailed in 13,747 ballots, with 642 rejected, or 4.7 percent. White voters have cast 60,954 mail-in ballots, with 681 — or 1.1 percent — rejected.

…

“When there’s a barrier, it’s going to fall hardest on the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised in the community, which is very frequently going to be poor voters and voters of color,” said Myrna Pérez, the director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Mail-in voting has more barriers than in person voting – that’s why it’s annoyed me all along that Washington state went to all-mail-in voting. That is, in person voting has the barrier of physically getting to the voting place, but mail-in has several hoops to jump through in addition to filling in the little circles. There are more details it’s possible to overlook.

He’ll sue! He’ll sue any damn scientists who say he’s bullshitting. He’ll sue them into oblivion!

Scott Atlas, a Trump coronavirus adviser, has threatened to sue a group of Stanford professors who wrote an open letter denouncing multiple public statement[s] Atlas has made about responding to Covid-19.

A letter from his lawyer said the professors’ statement “maliciously defames” Atlas and demanded the signers of the letters to withdraw their claims or be sued, according to Politico.

The open letter, which was published last Wednesday, said that Atlas’s statements and opinions “run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy”. Over 100 faculty members with various medical expertise signed the letter.

I don’t think you can sue over that kind of thing. If you could there would be no such thing as peer review, because who would risk it?

In recent weeks, Atlas has raised concerns among public health experts by questioning the use of masks and embracing the controversial “herd immunity” response to the pandemic. Atlas was criticized for not having a background in public health or infectious diseases, as Trump’s former top advisors Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci had.

Again – not a good candidate for a lawsuit. It’s not libel if it’s true, and it’s not libel if it’s evidence-based criticism.

Another woman steps up to say Trump sexually assaulted her.

Amy Dorris told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that Mr Trump groped various parts of her body and forcibly kissed her as she came out of a bathroom at the US Open tennis tournament.

Trump’s lawyers say nuh uh he did not.

She says Trump was lurking outside the women’s room waiting for her.

“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And that’s when the grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” she told the Guardian.

“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.”

Of course not. He’s a very large man, and he grabs whatever he feels like grabbing.

Speaking to The Guardian, Mr Trump’s lawyers say there would have been other witnesses to the assault and suggested the allegation could be politically motivated ahead of the November election.

There would? Why would there? If Trump wanted witnesses why did he loiter outside the toilet? If Trump wanted witnesses why didn’t he just assault her in the stands with everyone watching? Don’t be schewpid; following women to isolated spots is how it’s done.

This guy. Honestly.

He doesn’t so much gasp as emit a loud histrionic breath-squeal of shock-horror when Bev Jackson says “We personally don’t believe that anyone can be born in the wrong body.”

We not only don’t believe it, we can’t believe it. It’s six impossible things before breakfast all over again. We can’t believe these dopy science-fictiony fantasy run amok claims, because they are not believable.

I suppose they think there’s a giant warehouse in the sky, full of angels in overalls putting the right soul in the right body and occasionally getting it wrong. The box was mislabeled, or an angel is hungover after all that beer mixed with vodka, or they do it on purpose because they know it teases.

The full video:

The Pantanal is on fire:

The Pantanal, a vast floodplain in South America, is among the largest wetlands in the world. The mosaic of grasslands, shrublands, forests, marshes, and lakes covers an area as large as West Virginia. It is home to thousands of species, including many that are rare and endangered, such as jaguars, giant river otters, hyacinth macaws, and giant armadillos.

Though the number of ranches and cattle pastures have increased on the plateaus that surround the Pantanal in Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the floodplain itself has remained mostly free of development in recent decades. But in the past few years, the Pantanal has faced a new challenge: uncontrollable fire.

The 2019 fire season (July through October) was unusually active, and a shortage of rainfall during the 2020 wet season (December through April) meant Pantanal wetlands never had a chance to recharge. That made it easier for fires to continue burning throughout the first half of the calendar year, when fire activity is typically minimal in this region. The unusually dry conditions have meant that many fires that were lit intentionally—often to maintain pastures—have been escaping and burning uncontrolled through Pantanal ecosystems.

And once such fires have started to spread rapidly and widely, they can outpace the available infrastructure for firefighters to contain or stop them.

Via Arnaud Desbiez on Facebook:

The biggest problem of Pantanal burns is the direct impact with the loss of fauna that has an ecological importance in the ecosystem.

That’s a hotel logo but it’s a powerful photo anyway.