It’s like a bad rash.

The word you’re looking for is

WOMEN

On the other hand! The Post says it’s not that easy.

The not-so-subtle threat has prompted questions and concerns over the plausibility of Trump firing the country’s popular health expert, and whether the president has the legal authority to do so.

In short, he does not.

Technically, the president of the United States cannot directly fire Fauci, let’s say by a tweet, mainly because he is not a political appointee. As a career federal employee and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, Fauci is protected by federal civil-service regulations that shield him from being fired or demoted for political reasons.

Cool, so that means it was very stupid of Trump to admit he planned to do it in response to a rabid crowd at a campaign rally telling him to do it. He can’t very well say it’s not for political reasons.

Fauci could be removed, but it would imply a complicated process layered with civil-service protections that require the government agency to provide evidence that there is a just cause for dismissal, including failure to follow orders or misconduct.

The process to remove him would need to be initiated by someone in Fauci’s chain of command, such as the director of the National Institutes of Health or the Health and Human Services secretary, which is unlikely considering he is an esteemed figure in the scientific and medical community.

Yes but Trump.

However, should that be the case, Fauci would need to be notified about what the allegation was and would then have the opportunity to respond and present evidence to the Merit Systems Protection Board that such action was not warranted. He could also appeal the board’s decision in court.

While these rules are still in place, a controversial executive order issued by Trump two weeks ago could remove these long-held service protections from tens of thousands of civil servants, making it easier to dismiss them with little cause or recourse.

Rep. Don Beyer (D) whose Northern Virginia district includes more than 80,000 federal workers, said the order is intended to “send a clear message that conscientious dissent will not be tolerated,” and could target people like Fauci.

“Trump clearly sees one of his top priority if he is reelected as a settling of scores with civil servants like Dr. Fauci whom he regards as insufficiently loyal,” Beyer told The Washington Post.

He has to lose tomorrow. He has to he has to he has to.

On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden riffed on Trump’s threats:

“I’ve got a better idea,” Biden said during his campaign rally in Cleveland. “Elect me and I’m going to hire Dr. Fauci! And we’re going to fire Donald Trump!”

Do it do it do it do it do it.

I’m wrong that Trump can’t fire Fauci. Jonathan Chait says he can.

Here the preening smirking goat is saying he will.

It has been obvious for weeks that President Trump plans to fire Dr. Fauci. Trump has stripped Fauci and other public-health officials of all influence in decisions on how to handle the pandemic — or to be precise, not to handle it — and handed it over to unqualified right-wing crank Scott Atlas. Trump and his minions have repeatedly mocked Fauci for saying true things about COVID-19 (masks work, we have not turned the corner, a vaccine is not going to make it disappear quickly) that violate his political line.

Of course, presidents have the right to fire executive branch officials. (Fauci is a civil servant, which means Trump would need to order Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to fire him.)

Ah. There I was thinking civil servants were protected. Stupid of me.

He might come to regret it though – Fauci would probably be on CNN and MSNBC every night.

But let’s be more optimistic. Let’s hope he loses resoundingly and his head explodes before he has time to get rid of Fauci.

Haw haw yeah let’s get rid of our top experts in contagious diseases as a pandemic rages out of control thanks to a reckless moron driving the bus.

Trump threatened to fire Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during a midnight rally in Florida 24 hours before the presidential election.

As crowds at the Miami Opa-Locka airport chanted “Fire Fauci”, Trump allowed the chants to continue for several seconds before responding: “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election. I appreciate the advice. I appreciate it.”

He continued: “Nah, he’s been wrong on a lot. He’s a nice man though. He’s been wrong on a lot.”

He didn’t know everything there was to know about the virus at the beginning, that’s true, but then neither did anyone else. He was never as wrong as Trump was every time he said anything on the subject.

Fauci, 79 and one of the world’s foremost infectious diseases experts, has served under six presidents over three decades as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is one of the lead experts on Trump’s coronavirus taskforce and has frequently offered frank public health guidance in contrast to the president’s repeated falsehoods on the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So Trump’s fans say fire him, so that more people can die unnecessarily.

Trump and co are mad at Fauci again.

The White House has accused leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of playing politics days before the election in an interview about the coronavirus pandemic.

Oh lord. DARVO much? It’s not Fauci who “plays politics” ffs – it’s Trump and his worthless cohort. Fauci does epidemiology, Trump & Goons play politics. Fauci does his job, Trump lies and steals. Fauci tries to get the truth out, Trump tries to hide it under a billion tons of verbal garbage.

The US has recorded more [Covid] deaths and cases than any other country.

That’s not Fauci’s fault. It is Trump’s fault.

In his interview with the Post published on Saturday night, Dr Fauci warned that “all the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.” “You could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” he said.

When asked about the approaches of the two presidential candidates, Dr Fauci said Mr Biden was “taking it seriously from a public health perspective”, while Mr Trump was “looking at it from a different perspective… the economy and reopening the country”.

That is, Biden is doing the right thing while Trump is not.

The comments drew a sharp rebuke from the White House, which accused Dr Fauci of attempting to bolster Mr Biden’s bid for the presidency. Spokesman Judd Deere said the comments were “unacceptable and breaking with all norms”.

“As a member of the [US Coronavirus] Task Force, Dr Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticise the president in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the president’s opponent,” he added in a statement.

Ah yes please do tell us more about “breaking with all norms.” Trump has broken more norms than Spokesman Judd Deere has had hot dinners, but please do tell us all about what a shocking norm-breaker Anthony Fauci is. Then pack your bags and leave.

One little word…

Perhaps Polish doesn’t have a word for “woman.” Perhaps they have to use clumsy phrases like “people with vaginas.” Perhaps pigs have wings.

Trump voters again demonstrating that Trump is a magnet for assholes.

A group of Trump supporters has gathered at Burke Lakefront airport in Cleveland, hoping to disrupt a Joe Biden event scheduled to begin here shortly.

…

In Cleveland there was a crowd of about 30 Trump adherents at 11am, and they were hoping to disrupt the Biden event. Their chanting had drawn the attention of police.

Report what? 20 or so people yelling? Not really all that newsworthy is it. Anyway the Graun did so ha.

“I don’t think he’ll cancel, but we’re just here to make the noise and hopefully drown him out,” said James Pierse, who was waving a ‘Trump Train’ flag.

Just here to be assholes. That should be Trump’s personal motto.

Trump continues to bully us all.

Donald Trump has once again defended his supporters who participated in a caravan that swarmed a Biden campaign bus driving down a Texas highway on Friday.

One doesn’t consult Donald Trump on what is right and what is wrong.

The FBI confirmed yesterday that it was investigating the highway incident, after videos of the caravan sparked widespread safety concerns.

The president previously appeared to discourage the FBI from investigating the matter, saying in a tweet last night, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”

From the right and wrong files: he’s not supposed to interfere with the FBI that way. Presidents are not supposed to tell the FBI what to investigate and what not to investigate. See also: Richard Nixon.

I didn’t even know Johnny Depp was suing The Sun for libel. I barely know who he is, to tell the truth – I don’t think I’ve seen any of his work. Anyway, he was was suing The Sun for libel because The Sun called him a wife-beater, and he lost the suit because hey guess what it turned out to be true.

In the 129-page ruling, the judge, Mr Justice Nicol, said: “The claimant [Depp] has not succeeded in his action for libel … The defendants [the Sun and News Group Newspapers] have shown that what they published in the meaning which I have held the words to bear was substantially true.

The judge added: “I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved to the civil standard.” He also said he accepted Heard’s evidence that the allegations she made against Depp “have had a negative effect on her career as an actor and activist”.

Marvelous, isn’t it? He beats her up and her career is harmed because she said he beat her up.

In 12 out of the 14 incidents of assault reported by Heard, the judge said he found the allegations proved. “I do not regard [the Sun’s] inability to make good these allegations [in the other two incidents] as of importance in determining whether they have established the substantial truth of the words that they published.”

In his conclusion, Nicol cited an email sent by Depp in August 2016 as indicative of the actor’s true feelings towards Heard. Depp’s message said: “I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market … I can only hope that karma kicks in and takes the gift of breath from her … Sorry man … But NOW I will stop at nothing!!!”

Jeeeeeeeezus.

The visceral disgust a lot of men feel toward women never fails to creep me out. “The good one” is spared for a time when the man is infatuated with her, but once that’s over she’s just another dangling overused flappy fish market.

Way to inspire everyone to vote for Trump – start the bullying EARLY.

In a show of support of questionable political value, pro-Trump demonstrators clogged freeways Sunday across the country, from blue states like New Jersey, New York, and Washington state, to red-leaning Texas and purple Arizona. “WHOOO! We shut it down baby! We shut it down!” says one pro-Trump videographer as he pans the camera nearly 360 degrees, showing viewers the group of cars that had brought traffic to a complete standstill along the northbound Garden State Parkway in New Jersey.

Whoooooooo baby! Who knew that if a few people made a plan they could stop traffic on a freeway by simply forming a clump across all the lanes and then slowing to a stop? Besides everyone? The genius and skill and concern for others definitely make me want to vote for the mean blowhard from Queens.

Listen up Warsaw:

About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Friday, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) since it assumed office in 2015.

Protests have been held across the country since Poland’s constitutional tribunal declared earlier this month that abortions in instances where a foetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect were unconstitutional. Such procedures constitute about 96% of legal abortions in Poland, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

On Wednesday, pro-choice activists called a “women’s strike” that attracted over 400,000 people to protests in over 400 towns and cities across the central European nation.

The Warsaw protest was impressive.

Good, but not over yet: Texas court says no.

The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday rejected, without comment, a bid by three Republican candidates and a GOP activist to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast from drive-thru lanes in the emerging Democratic stronghold of Harris County.

But.

A federal judge will hold an emergency hearing Monday morning — less than 21 hours before polls open on Election Day — to hear arguments on a similar challenge filed by the same group of Republicans, who say that state law prohibits drive-thru voting, so every vote cast from cars during the early voting period should be tossed out as illegal.

At the same hearing, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen will weigh a request by Democratic organizations and the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, MJ Hegar, to join the case in defense of drive-thru voting — and the 126,911 votes cast that way.

The Democrats urged Hanen to reject the GOP lawsuit, filed two weeks after early voting had begun and four months after Harris County announced plans for drive-thru voting, arguing that the challenge was filed too late and that stepping in now would create mass confusion and disenfranchise voters whose ballots were legally cast.

Aw no it’s totally fair to wait until just before the election to file the suit so that there’s a better chance the voters won’t re-do their votes.

Women are a kind of accident that happens to men. Sometimes they can really spoil men’s whole lives!

Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. She was a 29-year-old model who was the face of an anti-bullying campaign and was about to return to her old school to talk to girls about gender-based violence. She was adored by her family. But on Valentine’s Day 2013 she was murdered by her violent, controlling boyfriend. He shot her four times through the locked door of a bathroom in his home, where she was cowering, petrified.

Poor guy. He must have been so upset!

Her future was stolen by a dangerous predator with a history of controlling and abusing women; a former girlfriend has said he used to lock her in his house with no food for hours at a time, call her parents many times a day to track her movements and physically abuse and threaten her to the extent that she feared for her life.

That is the story of Steenkamp’s horrific murder by the Paralympian Oscar Pistorius. But it seems our national broadcaster disagrees. Last week, the BBC began promoting a new four-part documentary series, The Trials of Oscar Pistorius. It launched a trailer that did not mention Steenkamp’s name, but instead featured Pistorius’s “remarkable” sporting achievements, praise from Nelson Mandela and his lie that “he didn’t do it”.

Well, you see, she doesn’t matter, and he does. Women are something that happens to men; they don’t count in any other way.

Accompanying this was a sickening BBC press release that boasted of a series telling the “extraordinary story” of “an international hero who inspired millions” until “he suddenly found himself at the centre of a murder investigation”. “According to Pistorius, the event was a tragic accident, but his troubled past and questionable testimony cast doubt on his innocence,” the BBC tells us. Amid the gushing, his murder conviction is not mentioned once. You could read it and think he got off.

Now if Steenkamp had had the good sense to be a trans woman the BBC would have been falling all over itself to Center her.

This is a dangerous mistake by the BBC that compounds the dominant narrative about men who murder their partners. So often, the stories that get told are of upstanding citizens, loving fathers and respected colleagues who, having been provoked, lose control and lash out in a moment of madness. The tragedy is theirs, not of the women they kill, who are so often cast as the spurned lover or unfaithful temptress.

The truth could not be more different. Professor Jane Monckton Smith, an expert on intimate partner homicide, reviewed 372 cases where men killed their partners. She found almost all these killings shared an eight-stage pattern that began with a pre-relationship history of stalking or abuse, which evolved into a relationship dominated by coercive control and an escalation in control tactics such as stalking or threatening suicide.

…

Two women a week are killed by their partners in England and Wales. Their lives could be saved if they, their loved ones and the police were more aware that coercive control does not just constitute psychological abuse at that time, but could be a red flag for what might happen. Yet the popular narrative perpetuates the idea that these murders are surprising and unpredictable, so there is little we can do to proactively keep women safe from dangerous predators.

Oh well, it’s only women.

What I’m saying. Brownshirts.

North Carolina news:

Alamance County sheriff’s deputies and Graham police pepper-sprayed people — including a 5-year-old girl and other children — who were participating in the “I Am Change” march to the polls on Saturday afternoon.

A march, that is – not a riot, not an invasion, not a terrorist attack, a march.

A racially diverse group of about 200 people walked with a police escort from Wayman’s Chapel AME Church to Court Square, where they held a rally encouraging people to vote. The event was organized by Rev. Greg Drumwright, a Burlington native who leads the the Citadel Church in Greensboro, according to his website.

Ah well there you go – racially diverse; they must be commie soshulist terrorists. Gas’em.

They had a moment of silence for George Floyd, then the cops told them to clear the road.

Then, deputies and police officers used pepper spray on the crowd and began arresting people. Several children in the crowd were affected by the pepper spray.

Melanie Mitchell said her 5-year-old and 11-year-old daughters were pepper-sprayed just after the moment of silence.

She said Graham police approached the crowd assembled in the street and told them to move onto the sidewalk and soon began spraying pepper spray toward the ground. Mitchell’s 5-year-old took off running, she said. Both kids threw up. … The crowd then moved to the courthouse where speeches were being given. But before the speeches concluded, Alamance County sheriff’s deputies began dismantling the sound system and telling the crowd to disperse.

And out came the pepper spray again.

I learned of this via David Frum, the conservative who was a speechwriter for Bush2 and is not a fan of Trump.

They’re his kids, I think. Nat Frum has the video of the woman being teargassed in her wheelchair.

Last days of Weimar.

More on the “Trump Train”:

According to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s Texas campaign, a Biden-Harris campaign bus was heading north on I-35 Friday afternoon on its way from San Antonio to a drive-by event with supporters at Texas State University in San Marcos, followed by a “closing argument” press conference at the Texas AFL-CIO headquarters in downtown Austin, when vehicles with Trump signs and flags surrounded the bus trying to slow it down in the middle of the highway or run it off the road.

Trump is the Bully candidate.

“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Tariq Thowfeek, Texas communications director of the Biden campaign, said in a statement Saturday.

But by doing so they underscored the vision Trump has for the US, which is a future of endless bullying by Trump and his loyalists.

The Texas Department of Public Safety Saturday night referred questions to the Austin Police Department. The Texas Tribune reported that the FBI is looking into the incident, which occurred in Hays County south of Austin.

Will Barr tell the FBI to stop looking into the incident? I wouldn’t put it past him.

The Texas Republican Party tweeted a statement Saturday evening from Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West in response to an inquiry about the matter from the Texas Tribune. West denounced the implication of the reporter’s question as “more fake news and propaganda.”

“Abby Livingston from The Texas Tribune reached out to the RPT today and asked a question about a Biden campaign bus in her attempt to portray conservatives as violent radicals, even though it is leftists from Antifa and BLM who have been assaulting, robbing, and looting fellow citizens and their property,” the Texas GOP said in its statement, which included the following response from West:

“Three Trump supporters have been executed, one in Portland, one in Denver, and one Milwaukee. A leftist mob attempted to storm the house of the McCloskeys, threatened to burn their house down, rape Mrs. McCloskey, and then kill them both.”

Uh…that never happened. Did it? Last I heard a group of demonstrators walked past the house of the McCloskeys, and found themselves facing guns pointed at them.

“Where is the liberal corporate media’s concern about that real violence? Additionally, none of what your question implies is accurate. It is more fake news and propaganda.

“Prepare to lose…stop bothering me. Maybe (George) Soros can cut y’all another check in 2022.”

That’s the Texas Republican Party chairman, not some rando on the street.

From Ex-Muslims of North America:

A beautiful piece by Yemeni artist Boushra Almutawakel from her hijab series.

Jesus god. I want this nightmare to END.

Smirk smirk smirk goes Trump. His fans scream.

See also:

Hur hur. Political violence is such a hilarious joke.

CNN has more details on the dangerous and terrifying actions by Trump fans in big trucks on a busy freeway:

The Biden campaign bus was traveling Friday from San Antonio to Austin as part of a push to urge Biden supporters to cast their ballots on the state’s last day of early voting.

According to a source familiar with the incident, the vehicles were a “Trump Train group.” These groups are known in parts of the state and organize events that involve their cars with flags and Trump paraphernalia and drive around to show support for President Donald Trump. The group began yelling profanities and obscenities and then blockaded the entire Biden entourage.

At one point they slowed the tour bus to roughly 20 mph on Interstate 35, the campaign official said. The vehicles slowed down to try to stop the bus in the middle of the highway. The source said there were nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus. Biden staffers were rattled by the event, the source said, though no one was hurt.

This is early brownshirts territory. Early brownshirts weren’t plotting extermination camps, early brownshirts were engaging in political violence against everyone to the left of the brownshirts.

It seems that Trump vigilantes were out in force in Texas.

Multiple videos posted to social media on Saturday morning apparently show Trump supporters in trucks and cars harassing a Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaign bus in Texas, causing the campaign to cancel a planned event in Central Texas.

Harassing as in surrounding it on the freeway, tailgating it, and sideswiping a smaller vehicle.

A Biden campaign spokesperson told Forbes that the Trump supporters “attempted to slow the bus down and run it off the road.” And one local Democratic Party leader, Katie Naranjo, tweeted photos and said Trump supporters “followed the Biden bus throughout central Texas” and “ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats.”

…

Texas State Rep. Rafael Anchía wrote on Twitter that the Trump caravan was encouraged by Eric Trump on Facebook and claimed that some of those involved were armed.

The police refused to intervene.

Trudeau says “Yes but.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended free speech on Friday, but added that it was “not without limits” and should not “arbitrarily and needlessly hurt” certain communities.

“We will always defend freedom of expression,” Trudeau said in response to a question about the right to show a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, as France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine did.

But. But but but but but.

“But freedom of expression is not without limits,” he added. “We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

And what does “respect for others” mean? Does it require respecting all their beliefs and taboos and dogmas and fantasies? I ask because if it does, we really don’t have free speech at all.

We do not have the right for example to shout fire in a movie theatre crowded with people, there are always limits,” he argued.

Gee, did he think of that all by himself? I’ve never heard it before.

Distancing himself from the position of French President Emmanuel Macron, Trudeau pleaded for a careful use of free speech. “In a pluralist, diverse and respectful society like ours, we owe it to ourselves to be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience a great deal of discrimination,” he said.

Like girls married off at 12? Like women murdered for talking to a man or not wearing hijab? Like people slaughtered for “apostasy” and “blasphemy”? Or like the people who murder them. You can’t do both, and I’d rather respect the victims.

Glosswitch had a shrewd observation on this.