Twitter claims to have a rule against wishing death on people. Cue hollow laughter.

Twitter has said that tweets wishing for Donald Trump’s death in the wake of the president’s diagnosis with Covid-19 violate its policies and could result in suspension.

But what about all those tweets wishing for JK Rowling’s death?

“Tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against anyone are not allowed and will need to be removed,” the company said in a tweet. A spokesman told the Guardian this policy has been in place since April and applies to all users, not just Trump.

That last sentence is confused: they mean the rule applies to all targets, not just Trump. It’s a rule for all users, applied to all targets. Except of course that it isn’t.

The announcement came as a surprise to many Twitter users, especially people in marginalized communities who say they frequently experience abuse on the platform. Evan Greer said that as a trans woman and the primary spokesperson for the digital rights organization Fight For the Future, she receives death threats on a “weekly, sometimes daily basis”.

Thanks Guardian. Anything about actual women? Anything at all? (Spoiler: no.)

Many people on Twitter described the policy as hypocritical, and pointed out that some users regularly receive death threats with little response from Twitter.

Women, especially.

That party last Saturday for the religious fanatic nominated to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s place appears to have been a super-spreader event.

A crowded Rose Garden ceremony last Saturday at which Donald Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett as his supreme court nominee has come under scrutiny after at least seven figures in attendance tested positive for coronavirus, including the president himself.

On Friday, the president’s former counsellor, Kellyanne Conway, announced she had tested positive and had “mild” symptoms. Two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, also announced they have also tested positive.

Both senators say they will quarantine for ten days…which is interesting because it should be for fourteen days, and the confirmation hearings begin…just as they stop quarantining.

Jenni Murray on why she decided to walk away from Woman’s Hour and the BBC:

I was not leaving, contrary to popular rumour, as a result of ageism on the part of the BBC. I made the decision a year ago when it became clear to me that it was time to move on and be free of the leash which, in recent years, had caused me to be what I can only describe as ‘cancelled’.

First came the furore concerning an article I had written in which I acknowledged that I was entering the most controversial and, at times, vicious, vulgar and threatening debate of our day.

I made clear that I was not transphobic or anti-trans. Indeed, I emphasised my belief that everyone — whether transgender or those of us who hold to the sex assigned to us at birth — should be treated with respect and protected from the bullying and violence that so many like me have suffered.

I merely asked the trans activists to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender, a trans woman and a woman, respect our right to safe single-sex spaces and abandon the nonsensical idea that we should be known as ‘cis women’.

Merely. Merely, she says. Women have been fed to the lions for less.

We are women. No need for further definition. I begged trans activists to understand feminism and the struggle we had experienced in fighting for our right to be viewed as equals to men.

I reminded them that feminism had fought against sexual stereotyping, and that it was ridiculous to assume a girl who liked cars and trousers really wanted to be a boy, or a boy who loved dolls was ‘born in the wrong body’ and needed to be a girl.

Of course, I was branded a TERF — a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist — on social media and threatened with all kinds of violence. But what shocked me most was the BBC’s response.

I was roundly ticked off publicly and informed that I would not be allowed to chair any discussions on the trans question or the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. I had lots of emails and tweets asking me why I had not been involved in this debate, as it was so important to Woman’s Hour listeners. You have the answer.

This is despite the fact that her show is Woman’s Hour. Women must echo the party line on trans women or be silenced; there is no other path.

It’s an interesting word, impartiality. For years, until recently, I and other broadcast journalists have written articles and books. In my case they were often controversial ones on marriage, abortion, pornography or bringing up boys, and I suffered no comeback from the BBC. At one point I was actually encouraged by a channel controller to write a regular column as a way of widening awareness of Woman’s Hour and Radio 4.

Impartiality was perceived as what a presenter demonstrated in the studio. It was not assumed that the radio or television audience expected the men and women who entered their homes on a daily basis to be dull ciphers with no opinions or personalities.

But that was before The Age of Trans Everything.

This is blood-chilling.

A teenager commits suicide (if this implausible story is even true) and Councillor Penny Zenny (who is a trans woman) asks the teenager’s mother “Was it JK Rowling?” Objection, your honor: leading the witness. In fact grabbing the witness by the neck and trying to force words out of her mouth.

Penny Zenny is easy to find on Facebook. PZ (oh there’s a funny coincidence) now has a self-pitying post (also public) about the angry reaction PZ got from that vile accusation.

I expressed my disappointment at the suicide of a youth as a direct result of the things J K Rowling has been saying and I get a whole bunch of people attacking me, not knowing my history, or the fact I have been a Samaritan, etc etc. Seems people get off of hate and ignorance.

Except the claim that the suicide was “a direct result of the things J K Rowling has been saying” came from Penny Zenny. He hasn’t offered any other reason to believe it’s true. What a horrific thing to do.

He seems to have taken down the first post. Good move, but shit move to post it in the first place.

October 2 2016:

Trump made a bye-bye video to let us know how delusional he still is.

I haven’t watched it yet. I have to pace myself on these things, or I lose the will to live.

Trump has tweeted out a video of him explaining that he’s headed to Walter Reed hospital, but reassuring Americans that he’s doing “very well.”

“We’re going to make sure that things work out,” Trump said. He added that the first lady is also “doing very well.”

He doesn’t have that power. He can’t “make sure that things work out.” The virus decides.

Also, just as Obama sent best wishes, the campaign released a disgusting dishonest attack on…Obama.

Trump is on the way to Walter Reed.

The visual of Trump striding out alone to the helicopter is likely to be seen as a reassurance that his case of coronavirus is still mild.

Still mild today. Maybe less mild tomorrow and less mild again the next day.

It’s totally normal, says the White House. Nothing to see, says the White House.

White House officials have described the choice to move Trump to Walter Reed medical center as a choice made “out of an abundance of caution,” and have described him as “working from” Walter Reed for the next few days. But the move has prompted obvious questions: if the president has only “mild symptoms,” why move him to the hospital?

Because by “mild” they mean…erm…

Staff is very very very busy closing that barn door.

The White House issued a statement on the hospital move:

President Trump remains in good spirts, has mild symptoms, and has been working throughout the day. Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the President will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days. President Trump appreciates the outpouring of support for both he and the First Lady.

For both he and the First Lady.

It seems Princess Ivanka may have been detected in a crime.

A nugget in the New York Times’s investigation into the US president’s tax returns could potentially cause lasting damage to Ivanka, currently a senior adviser to the president and a leading surrogate for his re-election campaign.

Currently a sleazy nepotistic hanger-on helping her filthy daddy kill us all.

She apparently received “consulting fees” paid by the Trump Organization, helping reduce the Trump family’s tax bill, while she was simultaneously an employee of the organization.

“Trump’s private records show that his company once paid $747,622 in fees to an unnamed consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia,” the Times noted. “Ivanka Trump’s public disclosure forms – which she filed when joining the White House staff in 2017 – show that she had received an identical amount through a consulting company she co-owned.”

…

Joshua Kendall, author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama, said: “There seems to be an overlap in terms of her declaring that same amount of money on her financial disclosure so this really could be very, very damaging. There has been some speculation about a criminal prosecution. This could really be a turning point for her.”

We can hope.

After they learned that Hicks has the virus.

After White House officials learned of Hicks’s symptoms, Trump and his entourage flew Thursday to New Jersey, where he attended a fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster and delivered a speech. Trump was in close contact with dozens of other people, including campaign supporters, at a roundtable event.

After they knew. This is how he treats friends and allies – it’s a wonder he doesn’t set the rest of us on fire so that he can make us into cheeseburgers.

The president did not wear a mask Thursday, including at the events at his golf course and on the plane, officials said. He was tested after he returned to the White House, but he also appeared on Sean Hannity’s TV show from the residence by telephone.

Two people who spent time with him said he did not show noticeable symptoms although he seemed tired and acknowledged to other aides later Thursday that Hicks was ill. During his fundraiser in New Jersey, “he said the things he usually says on TV,” said an attendee.

He always says the things he usually says. That’s all he’s got. It’s all very very usually, and much repeated and stale and please don’t say it yet again.

Trump has regularly appeared in public and in private without a mask — and has mocked Biden for wearing one and for curbing his campaign events for safety’s sake. The president has insisted that the virus is mostly dangerous to older people — a group to which he belongs — or those with health complications, although medical experts say the virus can strike anyone.

He’s older, he’s physically inactive, he’s very overweight. The virus kills some young healthy people too, but he’s not in a low-risk group.

At Tuesday’s debate, Trump was pressed on his insistence on having huge campaign rallies where no one is required to wear facial coverings or to socially distance.

“We’ve had no negative effect, and we’ve had 35 to 40,000 people at some of these rallies,” Trump said.

Welp that’s over.

I guess only the canaille wear masks?

Donald Trump‘s family ignored mandatory mask-wearing requirements at the debate between him and Democrat candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday.

So they’re mandatory because of a lethal pandemic, so what. Viruses don’t infect important people.

On Tuesday, members of the Trump family and the Trump administration entered the debate hall, where rules required everyone in the room wear masks, without masks, according to NBC News correspondent Hallie Jackson.

A doctor in a white lab coat was reported to have started to approach Trump family guests to ask them to put on masks, also offering them one in case they did not have one.

Well one wouldn’t have done them much good.

As the doctor got closer to them, Jackson said on the news channel’s live blog covering the debate, “someone shook their head and no one she reminded to put on a mask ended up putting one on.”

In other words “Go away interfering medicine person, you are not rich and important as we are rich and important.”

They wore masks when they arrived but then…took them off. Why? Unclear. Because of the cameras maybe?

I bet they’re sorry now.

Republican donors are freaking out.

Republican donors who attended President Donald Trump’s fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club are panicking after being around the commander in chief hours before he announced that he was infected with the coronavirus.

Well, you know, being around Donald Trump is just not healthy.

“The donors have been texting and calling. Freaking out,” the person with direct knowledge said.

The donors to Donald Trump. Do I feel compassion for them? I can’t say that I do.

Trump’s campaign, as of Friday morning, has not sent out any official guidance to many of the donors involved with the event. After publication of this article, donors who attended the gathering were sent an email with an 11:18 a.m. ET time stamp. The email reminds them that no one was permitted within six feet of the president and advises them to contact their doctor if they start feeling coronavirus symptoms. 

Also it was totally responsible and ethical and fine for Trump to be out schmoozing his donors at his golf club during the pandemic. Not one thing wrong with any of that.

The gathering had tickets costing up to $250,000. Dr. Rich Roberts, a longtime Republican donor, told The Lakewood Scoop on Friday that Trump privately met with about 19 people at the event. Roberts estimates that the meeting lasted about 45 minutes.   

Plenty of time. Triple the danger amount.

Some Republican donors questioned the president’s decision to go to the event after his longtime advisor Hope Hicks became ill. Hicks tested positive Thursday morning after displaying symptoms Wednesday night while on a campaign trip to Minnesota with the president. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters Friday that Hicks’ diagnosis became known just before the president left for Bedminster.

A normal person with a moral compass would have canceled the trip, but not our President Psychopath.

At least now they’ve learned their lesson, right?

Nah.

Jesus. “Duhhhhh I’ve been tested” – guess what, dude, you can test negative one minute and then positive the next. When YOU KNOW YOU’VE BEEN EXPOSED you shouldn’t be out there quacking into reporters’ faces.

“And that’s why I’m not wearing a mask.”

Tic toc tic toc

How ya like him now?

President Donald Trump has spent months trying to move the country’s focus away from the coronavirus. He’s purposely downplayed the threat it poses to Americans, pushed unscientific treatments and ensured the country that a vaccine would be arriving any day. In pre-recorded remarks at the annual Al Smith Dinner on Thursday night, Trump promised that “the end of the pandemic is in sight, and next year will be one of the greatest years in the history of our country.”

Hahahahaha cool, minutes later – oops Hope Hicks has the COVID, minutes after that, oops Trump has to quarantine, minutes after that, oops Trump has the COVID.

Just this morning, when I woke up, I was thinking sadly it might be days before he tested positive. I wasn’t daring to hope it had already happened, let alone hope for symptoms.

He’ll be fuming that he can’t get out there to shout at crowds of screaming racists. With no masks.

And according to the pool reporter traveling with Trump to and from the debate, “all family members who entered without a mask, members of his administration and other guests were not wearing masks.” A doctor affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic approached the group offering masks if they did not have them. No one in the group put on a mask. In addition, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on ABC News Friday morning that “no one was wearing masks in the room when we were prepping the President during that period of time, the group was about 5 or 6 people in total.”

I wonder how hard they’re all kicking themselves this morning.

What we do know is that Trump’s attempt to make these final weeks of the election about something other than the coronavirus failed the second he got his positive test back. Cable news will cover his illness — and the people he came into contact with and whether they are also sick — wall to wall for weeks. While Covid-19 was the lead story for most news outlets on most days for the last few months, it is likely to become the ONLY story for the foreseeable future.

Will there be a sympathy vote?

You already know, but just to get things started…

You reap what you sow.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus, the President announced early Friday morning, an extraordinary development coming months into a global pandemic and in the final stretch of his reelection campaign.

Good.

He’s been laughing and jeering and sneering, he’s been putting other people in danger in their thousands, he’s kneecapped the national response to the pandemic so thoroughly that we have the worst death toll in the world, so it’s only fair that he should get it himself.

The White House doctor says

The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence.

The fact that they’re “well at this time” means nothing. The disease can start out mild and then become not mild and then kill you.

Rest assured I expect the President to continue carrying out his duties without disruption while recovering, and I will keep you updated on any future developments.

Blah blah blah. Virus gonna do what virus does.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Grab that pen and sign.

Saw on a comment about Stephen King coming out in support of Rowling:

Eva Webb: Adorable Antifascist Pumpkin Queen

because agreeing to disagree means agreeing to not exist, and agreeing to let the other person write papers that effect policy that affects the lives and rights of the people she’s attacking. there is no agree to disagree when you’re lobbying to have someone’s legal rights taken away or restricted

You don’t have the right to force other people to see you the same way you see yourself, otherwise we’d all want most of the world to see us as ultra-rich billionaires, and the tax authorities to see us as ultra-poor non-profits. That people see you differently to how you see yourself isn’t some sort of phobia on their part, nor is it an unbearable trauma, it’s life.

If you require the affirmation of others to exist, you don’t actually exist. Reality is real whether we agree with it or not, if your existence is contingent on the words of JK Rowling, then you don’t actually exist, any more than Hagrid actually exists.

Rowling is a rich author in the UK. She is not directing UK policy, never mind global policy. Freedom of speech is a right, not all of the “rights” asserted by trans lobbyists actually qualify as such.

For example, there is no right to compete in sporting events under your preferred category. Otherwise the featherweight champion of the world in boxing, would be a mediocre heavyweight. A heavy person identifying as a light person would not be considered as having their existence or rights denied by boxing boards for this rule.

Now I’ve disagreed with some feminists on the issue of abuse shelters before. I think that there is a need for abused persons to have services geared towards them regardless of sex, that abused men do have a need for services directed towards them.

However, it doesn’t help abused men to close shelters that cater solely to women. The needs of the abused should take precedence over anybody’s feelings over the matter, and women who do not wish to face men after being abused, have the right to such safe places free of men even if you disagree with their personal feelings. “I’m a man and I would never…” doesn’t mean that she is in a state to face you, and her state of mind is the important thing in that situation.

People recovering from trauma should not be expected to be at their most emotionally stable, you don’t expect someone to run when their leg is broken, why do you expect the equivalent to people escaping abusive situations? There is a time and a place for discussing such issues, an abuse shelter is not one of them.

And what goes for men, goes for trans too. The answer to abuse suffered by trans individuals isn’t to shut down Women’s Place, it is to create shelters and services that cater to the needs of trans abuse sufferers. If you demand that shelters perform in a way that suits your politics rather than the needs of their residents, then you’re putting your politics ahead of the needs of abuse sufferers. Your rights do not trump the rights of those in need of such services.

It isn’t a denial of trans rights to state as such, anymore than it would be a denial of men’s rights to state as such.

Finally, if Rowling’s position on trans issues was simply ignored, then it would be largely unknown to the general public. Her advocacy only has the meaning it does now, because of the over-the-top reactions of ideologues who are chasing clicks and the latest sensation. It is as important as it is, mainly because of the rush to the virtue signal that has highlighted how lacking in virtue the signalers really are.

In the UK you have the Conservative Party in charge. In the US you have the Republican Party.

There are a lot of issues which should be taking precedence in both countries, and your press is arguing over the views of a children’s book author. There is this plague of highlighting the trivial to distract from the substantive, which only serves to undermine any real progress on any real issues.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on That’s showbiz.

Maroon @2: “And then four years later, Lester Holt sandbagged Dukakis by asking him if he would support the death penalty if someone raped his wife.”

It was Bernard Shaw, by the way.

It was perhaps in poor taste, but it was the easiest question in the world to answer politically. Dukakis could have said something like this:

“[optional: Bernard, that’s a disgusting and offensive question.] Would I support the death penalty for my wife’s killer? I’d want to do it myself with my own bare hands, slowly and painfully. I would be blinded by my rage and grief, and not interested in hearing any reasons why his life should be spared. And that’s exactly why we don’t let victims’ families sit as judge, jury, and executioner. We have a system of justice where impartial judges and jurors decide on guilt and punishment, and that’s as it should be. So would I want bloody vengeance for my wife? Yes, absolutely. But what I want most of all is to live in a country where justice is done. [optional puffery about how wonderful American justice is, even though it isn’t really true, but this is 1988]”

Rightly or wrongly, many Americans want to believe that their President has emotions, is a fighter, etc. (It’s why some people like Trump.)

Dukakis’s problem wasn’t that he was asked an unfair question, or that opposition to the death penalty was inherently unspinnable. It was that he gave a bland, unemotional answer to a question that should have provoked a reaction. Dukakis had already built up an image as a somewhat robotic technocrat — if he had showed some anger and feeling in his response, nobody was going to paint him as unhinged, it would have rounded him out as a human being. Hell, he could have just ripped Shaw a new orifice and that would have been a much better answer.

Dukakis was a politician. He had no excuse for botching that. One of the frustrating things about Democrats is that so many of them just plain suck at politics, and then complain that voters and the media focus on the wrong things. Well, yeah, of course they do. Voters are mostly idiots. I learned that in 8th grade student council elections, and have found no reason to change that opinion since. It’s one of the many reasons I’m not in politics. But if you’re going to get in the game, for fuck’s sakes, play to win, don’t complain about the rules of the game.

Trump’s “press secretary” tried to con journalists into thinking Amy Barrett was a Rhodes scholar.

If you watch it you see that she says “my bad” in a brushoff sort of way when she’s exposed as having lied to the reporters. We don’t refer to people who went to, say, Wharton as “Wharton scholars.” We say they graduated from Wharton or attended Wharton or got a BA at Wharton. (In Trump’s case we note that they did it by paying a less stupid kid to take the SATs for him.) The “press secretary” and former Fox News sleaze got caught telling a flattering lie about the religious fanatic Trump nominated for RBG’s seat.

Danger? What danger? I don’t see any danger, do you? Oh you mean danger to the female prisoners – oh well who cares about them.

She’s not just some random shouter, she’s a Councillor. And a woman.

Texas governor goes for more voter suppression.

Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order Thursday requiring counties to close multiple locations where voters can drop off completed mail-in ballots.

As an election security measure, counties will be limited to one dropoff site where poll watchers — designated by political parties and candidates — must be allowed to observe ballot deliveries by voters, Abbott said.

“Election security” my ass – it’s voter suppression.

Travis County has four dropoff locations, including three downtown, while Harris County has opened 12 locations as election officials strove to meet unprecedented demand for mail-in voting during the pandemic — particularly amid questions about the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service.

“As we work to preserve Texans’ ability to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic, we must take extra care to strengthen ballot security protocols throughout the state. These enhanced security protocols will ensure greater transparency and will help stop attempts at illegal voting,” Abbott said in a statement.

They will make it harder for people to vote, is what they’ll do. That’s voter suppression. Scumbag.

How that nightmare looked from farther away:

Over the years, the presidential debates have become as much about entertainment as elucidation. As journalists we hype them like Vegas world heavyweight boxing bouts beforehand and score them like TV critics afterwards.

Indeed, and it’s maddening. There’s so much palaver about the stupid debates, as if they mattered, when in fact there are much better ways to evaluate the candidates and what they plan to do.

Ever since Ronald Reagan mastered the genre, the debates have tended to reward star power over expertise.

Well there you go. If it works for a Reagan and doesn’t work for a Mondale then it’s not a good instrument.

Presidential debates increasingly have come down to who can deliver Reagan-style one-liners, the jokes or putdowns that are rerun endlessly on the news in the days afterwards. What is supposed to be a job interview has become more like an audition for the role of leading man.

And…that’s not what presidents are for. They’re not our roommates or colleagues, we don’t have to live with them, we don’t even have to like them.