Meanwhile from the other side of the Control Women faction, the Federalist explains us the joy of submission (for women that is; obviously not for men).

I’d like to say it’s just those darned pagan liberals who hate the biblical teaching that wives are to submit to their husbands. But the fact is, feminism has finished its long march through the institutions, and most conservatives have been indoctrinated to hate this teaching as well.

Oh cheer up, bro – feminism is now being dismantled from within and handed over to men who say they are women. You’ve won.

Most of what he says is theological and thus not very relevant to sexism in general. He lets slip an interesting claim though.

The specter of domestic abuse is frequently raised in response to these verses, which, indeed, is a real issue with real victims. Nevertheless, complaining that biblical submission primes women for abuse makes about as much sense as complaining that “honor thy father and thy mother” primes children for abuse.

Why, yes, it does, and that is in fact a lot of sense. There are abusive fundamentalist parents, and they do indoctrinate their children into the idea that their authority is absolute, no matter how violent and/or rapey and/or suffocating.

But it’s all worth it, he says, because dom/sub is erotic.

Submission isn’t an erotic necessity because of the evil patriarchy. It’s an erotic necessity because male submission is fundamentally ugly to women. Women are typically attracted to a man’s confidence and initiative in the face of risk — and therefore not to a man she can lead by the nose because he fears causing a fuss.

So how does this work? What about men interacting with other men? Do they have to keep dominating each other to avoid repulsing each other? So that every encounter is a spiral of dominance that ends in violence?

In some cases, yes, but most of us see that as less than optimal rather than the way things should be.

It’s weird that this Matthew Cochran fella apparently can’t see horizontal relationships but only vertical ones. Do we have to see each other as either dominant or submissive? Can’t we see each other as equals, with whatever differences of personality and opinion we have?

We can, yes, but godbotherers maybe find it more difficult. The god-human relationship is obviously vertical, so fans of the god are conditioned to see things that way. Yet another reason to turn your back on the whole thing.

What was that about a contagious person going out for a joy ride with a bunch of people in a car?

The president on Sunday was sharply criticized for leaving the hospital to greet supporters. Doctors and experts said he put the health of the personnel riding with him in the car at risk.

Let’s go back to 2014 for a moment…

In a pair of 2014 tweets being shared online, Trump attacked a New York doctor who had returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. Craig Spencer’s positive diagnosis set off a sprawling contact tracing effort, made difficult by the fact that he rode the subway, went to a bowling alley and rode in a taxi.

But here, context is key. Spencer did not know he had the Ebola virus when he used public transport or met up with friends. And, critically, people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to show symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.

As such, his travel and activities were not deemed to be a risk to the public because it occurred before he displayed symptoms. No one is known to have contracted the virus from Spencer.

Trump on the other hand…

Trump wanna go home. Trump wanna be free. Trump don’t care all those other people Trump WANNA GO HOME.

Sources told CNN that Trump had demanded to be released from the hospital on Sunday.

Trump, as ever, is concerned about the optics of staying in the hospital, according to CNN’s Jim Acosta. He worries the visual of him being hospitalized “makes him look weak,” a source told the network.

Focused like a laser on the important issue.

Organizations that claim to campaign for or promote or defend women continue to help men take over.

“…to honour, celebrate and champion women’s voices, and to shine a spotlight on phenomenal fiction written by women…a diverse breadth of women’s voices…the voices of women and the experience of being a woman…the word ‘woman’ equates to a cis woman, a transgender woman” which is to say A MAN.

We’re here to celebrate women, we’re here because literary prizes so consistently overlooked women, we set out (as the Orange Prize) to redress that overlooking of women, and now we’re dynamiting the whole idea by including MEN in a prize we set up for WOMEN.

Oopsie.

She seems indignant that she has tested positive after testing negative. But…how else does she think that should work?

And yet…her signature golden cross didn’t work.

Updating to add:

Here’s the video where he giddily tells us he’s going to go outside and visit the fans…he the highly infectious patient is going to skip through the hospital – where he’s been meeting soldiers and first responders, he says, despite that whole HIGHLY INFECTIOUS thing – skip through the hospital and jump in a sealed car with some agents and do what he can to spread the virus even more.

If only this were happening in the real world.

It’s so bonkers and evil I can’t deal with it (except by posting about it until my fingers drop off).

About those steroids…

The White House physician said Sunday that President Donald Trump is now taking another drug for Covid-19, adding to his growing list of treatments for his illness.

Dr. Sean Conley said the president was given a steroid called dexamethasone following “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” meaning his oxygen levels dropped too low.

…

Dexamethasone has been shown to be beneficial in those with severe Covid-19 because it can stop the immune system from going into overdrive. When that happens, the immune system can do more harm than good, attacking the body in what is called a cytokine storm.

However, the drug is not recommended for more mild cases of the disease.

Ah. So that means…

“The fact that he got the steroid sets up a bit of a red flag that there’s something going on here,” NBC News senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres told Kate Snow on Sunday. “I think they might be painting a little bit of a rosy picture for everyone.”

They shouldn’t bother. It’s not as if we want him to be robust and healthy. We want him above all things to go away.

Before his car ride Trump did an idiotic video in which he said he’s learned about the virus. It’s a bit late for that! Plus it’s not true, because his very next move was to do his best to infect his Secret Service agents.

In the video, Trump said (seven months into the pandemic) that he’s “learned a lot about Covid” and saying that contracting the virus has been the “real school”, saying “this isn’t the ‘let’s-read-the-books’ school”.

Wrong again, Bozo. Having it teaches you what it’s like for you to have it, but it doesn’t teach you what it is, how it’s transmitted, how to avoid catching it, how to avoid infecting others, and similar important facts about it. Experience can be useful but it doesn’t teach you everything you need to know.

Also: contempt for books and learning is not cute for someone in your job.

Also: doing your best to infect your Secret Service agents is just plain stupid as well as psychotic and evil.

While Trump said that contracting the virus has allowed him to understand the virus, he chose to get into a car with other people even though he is contagious, something that multiple health experts have pointed out puts others at risk.

I want him to suffer.

Trump’s outing:

No, it really doesn’t, and also the need for the drive n wave was so very very small that it was non-existent.

Holy shit, now he’s going for a joy ride to wave to “fans,” thus putting a bunch of Secret Service agents in extreme danger.

Cool, so the president’s tame doc admits he lied in the briefing yesterday. That’s fine then. No doubt tomorrow he’ll admit he lied in today’s.

In a jarring news conference Sunday, Trump’s doctors said that even though the President has had at least two concerning drops in oxygen levels, they are hoping he could be discharged as early as tomorrow from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Because he’s barely sick at all. Really. You can trust us on this.

Conley again failed to answer basic questions about the President’s condition and admitted Sunday that he had omitted those alarming drops in the President’s oxygen levels during Saturday’s news conference because he wanted to “reflect the upbeat attitude” that the team and the President had about his condition and didn’t want “to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction.”

I guess he means steer everyone’s perception of the course of illness in another direction? He can’t steer the course of the illness itself by saying things to the press. Anyway, that’s quite an admission. “Yes, I lied about it yesterday to make it sound better.” Oh. Ok then.

Conley acknowledged that his evasive answers “came off that we were trying to hide something” but said that “wasn’t necessarily true,” adding that the President is “doing really well” and is responding to treatment.

Was it contingently true? (Yes.)

The President has experienced “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” Conley said Sunday. The first significant episode occurred late Friday morning when, Conley said, the President had “a high fever and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%.” The President was given oxygen at that point, Conley said, answering a question he had evaded during his Saturday briefing.

“After about a minute on only two liters, his saturation levels were back over 95%. He stayed on that for about an hour maybe, and it was off and gone,” Conley said Sunday. Later on Friday, Conley said, Trump was out of bed, moving around the White House residence with only mild symptoms.

On Saturday, the President’s oxygen level dropped again “to about 93%,” Conley said. “We watched it and it returned back up.” But the incident led doctors to start treating Trump with the steroid drug dexamethasone, which has been shown to help patients with Covid-19. It is typically given to patients on supplemental oxygen or ventilation.

I.e. patients who have very severe cases.

How about the lungs? Any damage?

He offered no detail about what X-rays or CT scans have shown about whether there has been any damage to the President’s lungs.

“There’s some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern,” Conley said, not explaining whether they were expected findings in the lungs of a normal patient or a Covid-19 patient.

Plus the thing about admitting he lied yesterday.

Meadows made the mistake of trying to get some of the truth out, so now Trump is pissed off at him.

Earlier on Saturday, Meadows had also attempted to signal that the President’s initial condition was more serious when he spoke to pool reporters as an unnamed official after Conley’s briefing that morning. But his identity was later revealed by The New York Times and The Associated Press, and Trump was furious at his chief of staff for contradicting the White House physician’s upbeat assessment, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN’s Jim Acosta Sunday.

How dare anyone who works for Trump tell us the truth?

A separate White House official confirmed Trump is unhappy with Meadows, as the chief of staff is now viewed by Trump advisers as having damaged the credibility of the current medical briefings on the President’s bout with the coronavirus.

Ah right. Meadows “damaged the credibility” of the briefings because he told some of the truth, while Trump wants the briefings to be lies.

Dude’s last words are going to be lies.

And another another one of these.

Oh those attempts to “reach out and educate” – by which they mean attempts to accuse and bully. For some reason despite all these attempts to accuse and bully, she continues to click “like” on some tweets, and “LGBT+ Labour Scotland,” or the people in control of its Twitter account, wants to force her to stop doing that and instead follow their orders. It is UNACCEPTABLE for her to have her own views; she must be forced to exchange her own views for those of LGBT+ Labour Scotland, and have the whip withdrawn as well.

What does that mean?

Defying a three-line whip is very serious, and has occasionally resulted in the whip being withdrawn from an MP or Lord. This means that the Member is effectively expelled from their party (but keeps their seat) and must sit as an independent until the whip is restored.

These twerps want a woman MP expelled from Labour for liking tweets that they disapprove of; they want that and they’re trying to make it happen.

Open season on women innit.

The i-word is the clue – by “women’s rights” she means “men’s rights.”

The Kingdom of the Netherlands fully supports inclusive women’s rights movements around the world. The effects of COVID-19, the pandemic, are felt by all of us. But women and girls are as always disproportionately affected. It’s a shadow pandemic, and it worries me deeply.

It’s good to see a government minister worrying about women.

That’s why today I’m delighted to share this stage

…with a man.

That’s a bit of a bump.

with someone who deeply inspires me, Nikkie de Jager.

Who is that? A trans woman whose claim to fame is giving tutorials on makeup.

Thanks for worrying about women.

H/t Tineke

Oh lord he’s done it again. Wouldn’t you think he’d learn? Or at least that the people around him would learn? WE CAN SEE THE BLANK PAPER.

President Donald Trump was seen in a photo taken at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center apparently signing a blank piece of paper with a marker, further undermining the credibility of the White House when it comes to the president’s health.

And further undermining anyone’s ability to take this bozo seriously.

The White House on Saturday night released pictures of the president working at the hospital, where he remained for a second night after he and First Lady Melania Trump both tested positive for the coronavirus.

Or rather, pictures of the president pretending to work. Pictures of the president pretending to work in the manner of a small child, who mimics the outward gestures of adult Working while having no clue what the work actually entails. I sit at desk, I have paper, I have sharpie, I write on paper with sharpie, I working.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a senior aide, shared one the pictures on her Twitter page, adding: “Nothing can stop him from working for the American people. RELENTLESS!”

That is, nothing can stop him faking photos of himself pretending to do workings. We’re much impressed, Princess.

“Ok, sir, first in the brown room in shirtsleeves, then in the white room in a jacket. Thaaaat’s it; nicely done, sir.”

Early Sunday morning, the word “staged” was trending on Twitter.

They can’t even lie to us competently.

It now appears that Trump knew he was infected Wednesday, so he knew he was exposing people who got near him, and he went right ahead and did exactly that. What a peach of a guy he is.

White House officials and doctors stoked new questions Saturday about how sick President Trump has been with COVID-19 and when he became ill, as the president’s medical team suggested Trump had been sick for a day and a half before he announced his infection early Friday morning.

The new timeline, if accurate, would mean Trump held a rally and fundraiser in Minnesota on Wednesday and an intimate fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday while knowing he was sick, potentially exposing supporters, employees and others to the coronavirus.

He’s addicted to doing rallies and fundraisers and similar ego-parading events. A little thing like potential illness and death and wider contagion isn’t going to make him cancel.

Conley and his team tried to give an upbeat assessment of Trump’s current condition, with one physician saying that Trump told his doctors Saturday morning, “I feel like I could walk out of here today.”

I’m getting increasingly irritated by this particular line of bullshit. COVID-19 progresses; it’s not clear how bad a case is until 10 days or so in. Conley and his team obviously know that, but they’re obediently trying to manipulate us.

“The team and I are extremely happy with the progress the president has made,” Conley said.

Oh put a sock in it.

As Trump’s allies rallied to project a sense of calm, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tweeted that he’d had a “great call” with him, discussing topics including the Supreme Court vacancy and the economy. “He sounds well and says he’s feeling good,” McConnell wrote.

Blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. It’s like the French in May 1940 saying everything’s fine…up until the moment the planes appeared.

The list of top Republicans who’ve been infected is fueling a sense of panic in Washington as the virus creates the type of outbreak in and around the president that has already enveloped other parts of the country.

Gee. If only someone had warned them. If only someone had told them, over and over, what precautions to take to avoid infecting others and being infected.

Though the District of Columbia had only a handful of new cases last week, the White House itself has become the city’s biggest vector.

All because they deliberately flouted the pandemic-avoidance instructions.

Another one of these.

Telling feminists we can’t have a sex-based women’s rights movement.

You couldn’t make it up.

Trump is doing very well, unless he’s doing very badly. It’s one of those. Maybe.

Today, when we saw the doctors line up outside Walter Reed in their white lab coats, we thought we might finally get clarity. The picture painted by the White House physician, Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, was rosy: Trump was in good spirits — so good, apparently, he had been fever-free for 24 hours, and felt he could have walked out of Walter Reed today.

But that wouldn’t mean anything even if it were true, which it probably isn’t. People mostly don’t feel terrible at the beginning.

Anyway, they changed their story.

The White House reporter on pool duty — traveling with the president and delivering official dispatches to reporters at numerous outlets — sent this dispatch, quoting “a source familiar with the president’s health”:

The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.

What is all this gobbledygook? Of course they’re not on a clear path to a full recovery, because this virus doesn’t work like that. This isn’t medical talk, it’s PR talk.

Anyway, the core point is that the White House is bullshitting us. Gee, you don’t say.

Yeah yeah yeah, Trump is healthy as a moose, he could break a tree in half right now if they’d let him.

President Donald Trump phoned Rudy Giuliani from his hospital bed Saturday afternoon to declare he feels so healthy, “I could get out of here right now.”

The former Big Apple mayor said his friend of 30 years sounded hale and hearty during the 2:30 p.m. conversation. “If you can judge by the way he speaks, he sounded like vintage Donald Trump,” Giuliani said.

Covid takes days to get bad. How perky Trump feels now is meaningless.

He gave Giuliani a “statement.”

“I am the president of the United States. I can’t lock myself in a room. … I had to confront [the virus] so the American people stopped being afraid of it so we could deal with it responsibly.

No, he did not have to “confront the virus” i.e. ignore it and refuse to distance and wear a mask and cancel rallies. That is not what he had to do. Also the making us less afraid thing? His actions didn’t do that.

“I’m going to beat this.

“Then I will be able to show people we can deal with this disease responsibly, but we shouldn’t be afraid of it.

“If I had handled it any other way, I would have created more panic, more fear in the American people.

“We are making great progress on dealing with this disease and making better progress with the economy than anyone had the right to expect.”

No, no, no, and no.

People who have to work for and near Trump because of their long-term careers are pissed off.

Mask-wearing had become rare among Trump’s staff and the Secret Service agents and military service crew aboard Air Force One — even after national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien tested positive in July.

On the campaign trail, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric have spoken to packed audiences in indoor venues. And the Trump campaign violated state regulations limiting the size of gatherings in Nevada, earning a public rebuke from the governor after the president addressed thousands at an indoor event there last month.

…

While the nation suffered through an unprecedented and fear-filled lockdown, there was a bubble at the top, where Trump’s actions seemed to flout the laws of disease, and to embolden — or coerce —those around him to try it, too.

In other words military staff and Secret Service agents couldn’t wear masks around him.

Now, dozens of people — donors, aides, Secret Service agents — who had been close to Trump before his diagnosis wondered if they, too, might be infected. A whole world, with Trump at its center, suddenly faced the threat that the president had encouraged them to deny or understate.

Secret Service agents expressed their anger and frustration to colleagues and friends Friday, saying that the president’s actions have repeatedly put them at risk. “He’s never cared about us,” one agent told a confidant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal reaction.

Former Secret Service agents said it was unheard of for agents to openly complain about their president but that some currently in the ranks had become convinced during the pandemic that Trump was willing to put his protectors in harm’s way.

Agents who work in field offices around the country complained that since late August, they are no longer being tested when they return home from working at a rally for the president.

They’re not people, they’re part of Trump’s equipment.

“It’s not just Trump. It’s the entire senior team around the White House participating in this fiction that, ‘We can ignore it,’ ” said Simon Rosenberg, founder of the liberal think tank NDN. “They’re not in a bubble if they’re around other people and not wearing masks. The whole reliance [just] on testing was insane.”

And “for security reasons,” the Secret Service won’t tell us how many agents have been infected.

What Trump was busy with in the last hours before the news broke:

What ridiculous order?

Politico adds:

President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to reverse a move by the elite Navy SEALs to make its ethos gender neutral — marking the latest incursion by the commander in chief into the service’s operations.

And his latest attack on ideas of equality and fairness and opportunity.

American Military News first reported on Monday that the Navy SEALs and the Navy Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen had changed their ethos and creed statements to remove words such as “man” and “brotherhood.”

A Navy spokesperson told the outlet that the ethos and creed were written before all combat posts were opened to women.

The White House declined to comment.

Ash Carter, who was defense secretary under former President Barack Obama, in 2015 opened all combat specialties to women. However, no women have yet qualified to become a Navy SEAL.

They could always recruit a trans woman…