One bullet dodged in the war on abortion rights.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices on the Supreme Court on Monday to block a controversial Louisiana abortion law that critics said would have closed nearly every clinic in the state.

The 5-4 ruling is a win for supporters of abortion rights who argued that the law was not medically necessary and amounted to a veiled attempt to restrict abortion. The law barred doctors from performing the procedure unless they had admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Not really veiled, is it – everyone knows it’s about killing abortion rights.

About UN Women – what is it? I found myself wondering if it was just one of those fake-official outfits that are nothing but a Twitter account and a person, so I looked it up. It’s a genuine part of the UN – called a UN “entity”…and I don’t really know what that means, but at least it’s not another “Catholic League” which is really just Bill Donohue. It was established by the UN General Assembly in 2010.

It says it’s there for the women and girls.

UN Women is the global champion for gender equality, working to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential.

Great, but that’s not what it’s doing. It’s pretty much doing the opposite right now.

Today for instance.

They asked no women. None. Zero. The link is to a piece on Medium:

Every June, the world unites to celebrate Pride Month and to promote equality and visibility of the LGBTIQ+ community.

So UN Women could do that by talking to four lesbians, yeah?

But that’s not what they did here.

Geena Rocero (she/her) is a Filipino American supermodel, transgender advocate and founder of Gender Proud, a media production company that tells stories of the transgender community worldwide to elevate justice and equality, based in the United States of America.

Rocero is the photo second from left.

Imara Jones (she/her) is a journalist and Founder and Creator of TransLash Media in the United States of America, which tells the stories of trans lives. In 2019 she moderated UN Women’s High-Level meeting on gender diversity beyond binary identities.

Photo first from left.

Amanda Bosco (she/her) is a transgender youth activist from Uganda, advocating for LGBTI rights.

Photo four.

Tarek Zeidan (he/his) is a sexual and bodily rights activist from Beirut, Lebanon, advocating for the rights and protection of LGBTIQ+ individuals and groups in the Middle East and North Africa region, and is the President and Executive Director of Helem, the first LGBT rights organization in the Arab World, founded in Beirut in 2001.

Photo three.

Sorry, wims, it turns out nobody gives a shit about you.

Very progressive.

None of this can work unless everyone carefully changes the meaning of core words, and why should we agree to do that in such a fatuous delusional cause?

The Guardian solemnly explains about these genius new young people who think you can change material reality by changing the vocabulary.

Who decides your gender?

Don’t be silly. You mean “sex,” and no one decides. The question makes no more sense than “Who decides your species?”

A growing number of kids say it is up to them – and are rejecting the traditional markers of “male” or “female” in favor of identifying as “genderqueer”, which refers to people who don’t fall squarely within the gender binary. Stars like Indya Moore have come out as non-binary and use they/them pronouns, and non-binary characters are increasingly featured in breakout TV shows, such as Asia Kate Dillon’s role in Billions.

Don’t be silly. You mean a growing number of kids are confused about what is material reality and what is human convention. If you can’t grasp that distinction then nothing you say is going to make any sense…and of course that’s how the rest of the article goes.

Yet non-binary kids say they are widely misunderstood, and they face prejudice. Donald Trump, for instance, recently decreed that protections against healthcare discrimination were to be applied based exclusively on biology rather than one’s inner sense of gender.

Meaning…what? Healthcare should be based on “one’s inner sense of gender” and not on biology? So boys should get pap smears if their “inner sense of gender” tells them they are girls? You might want to warn them that that will hurt.

After that there’s a lot of self-obsessed drivel from four of these enthralling “non-binary” kids. I don’t recommend it.

Trump says he never heard a word about it.

President Trump is denying a New York Times report that he was briefed on an alleged Russian effort to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill Western forces — including U.S. troops — in Afghanistan.

Please. He was briefed. Maybe he didn’t read it, maybe he didn’t listen, maybe he was too busy tweeting, maybe he instantly forgot it because he doesn’t give a shit – but he was briefed.

Citing unnamed officials, the Times report, published Friday, details how U.S. intelligence officials reached the conclusion about the secret payments and then briefed the president in March. The White House National Security Council conferred an interagency meeting that same month to discuss the matter, according to the report. The finding was also included in the President’s Daily Brief, according to the Times.

According to the Times, U.S. officials have concluded that the bounty operation was orchestrated by the GRU, an arm of Russian military intelligence that has been linked to assassination attempts and other cloak-and-dagger operations, including the 2018 nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury, England.

The GRU is the same unit that U.S. intelligence has implicated in efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Trump doesn’t care. Trump has tweets to send and golf balls to move when no one’s looking and pussies to grab and lies to tell.

That’s better.

What’s one of the very best ways to spread COVID-19? Singing in a choir. Great! Let’s have a great big choir sing today when Pence is giving a speech. That will put us on the map!

A choir of more than 100 people performed without masks at a robustly attended event in Texas at the First Baptist Church on Sunday that featured a speech by Vice President Mike Pence.

Nearly 2,200 people attended the “Celebrate Freedom Rally,” in the Lone Star State, according to rally organizers, which has seen a severe surge in coronavirus cases since easing restrictions. The venue capacity for the indoor event was close to 3,000 attendees, organizers say.

Throughout the service, the members of the choir sang at full volume, behind an orchestra. Between songs, the choir members put their masks back on when they sat down, according to pool reports from the event. The members of the choir had space between them, but it was not clear if it was the recommended six feet.

Singing at full volume while packed close together – that’s several of the very worst things you can do. I read a thing about it a couple of days ago. Talking loudly is bad, singing is worse.

Face masks at the event were “strongly encouraged,” with signs posted around the venue signaling the suggestion. According to pool reports from the event, at least half of the crowd was wearing a face covering, an act which experts say can reduce the transmission of Covid-19 by as much as 50%.

But the members of the choir are doomed, and they will infect others.

Choir rehearsals and performances became a focal point early in the course of the coronavirus pandemic, with an outbreak within a 122-member choir in Washington state becoming the subject of a in-depth report out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the report, 87% of singers that attended rehearsal contracted the deadly virus.

It was in Snohomish County, the next county north of here. Two people died.

I wrote a column for The Freethinker about this confusion over contagion and FreeDom.

About that Stephen King retweet…never mind.

About this whole issue of men just not seeing women as a class of people who face systematic unequal treatment, a class of people who are dismissed and ignored and ridiculed because they are that class of people. There really are a lot of men who just don’t see that, who don’t believe it’s true, who don’t think it matters. Who see us as “Karens” or potential “Karens” and who feel no embarrassment about dismissing women as “Karens.” Harvey Jeni points out that Lloyd Russell-Moyle is one such man.

Russell-Moyle has since apologised, but it is worth noting he is not alone in his point of view. The idea that women are cynically using their experiences of domestic and sexual abuse as justification for the supposedly unspeakable belief that sex based exemptions currently contained within the Equality Act ought to be upheld, is gathering apace. The Guardian columnist Owen Jones made a similar accusation when he tweeted a thread in condemnation of JK Rowling, attacking her apparent portrayal of herself as a “martyr”.

How have Jones and Russell-Moyle and so many other men (and women) managed to convince themselves that a man’s desire to role-play being a woman is the real subordination and martyrdom while merely being a woman is just the precondition for being a Karen?

… according to men such as Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Owen Jones, women best not dare imagine that being traumatised by male violence is any kind of excuse for rejecting mixed sex spaces. We are to accept them without murmur, and if we don’t we are oppressive bigots. They couldn’t give a shit what we’ve been through, nor do they want to hear any more of our manipulative whining about it. So there, shut up.

They couldn’t give a shit about it and quite frankly they don’t believe it.

Still many women have taken the brave step of speaking out in an effort to explain why an end to single sex spaces will curtail their freedom further. We want others to understand why we might be reluctant to access support services if we cannot be guaranteed a female service provider. We are trying to explain why we might feel too frightened to use a public toilet situated down the end of a dark deserted corridor if any male person claiming a female gender identity (and with no gatekeeping literally any male person can claim one) has a right to be there. We are trying to show why it is not unreasonable for us to ask that the person performing our cervical smear, or any other type of intimate care, be female.

But rather than listening, we instead have men in positions of power accuse us of deliberately and calculatingly using these experiences to hurt and oppress others. Of course. Women are scheming like that. Ha! We are not really upset, we’re just pretending — and anyway, the crime of recognising trans women as biologically male is far greater than any triviality we might have endured.

Women are privileged at best and oppressors at worst. It’s only men who say they feel like women who are truly oppressed and disprivileged.

How did we get here? I don’t know. Massive bullying is certainly part of it, but how did the belief get so entrenched that the massive bullying happened? I don’t know. I don’t understand it. The belief is so silly and so counter to reality that I just don’t get how it dug itself in so fast.

Noteworthy.

When JK Rowling quotes Andrea Dworkin and Stephen King retweets her doing so…we may be seeing some fissures widening.

Rowling has thoughts on Lloyd Russell-Moyle.

She can multiply those 3k emails by a large number, I should think, on the grounds that most of us refrained from emailing her because we figured she would be buried in the avalanche.

If he does dig deeper he’ll find there’s nothing there – slogans are all there is. Bad, stupid, meaningless slogans are all there is.

Of course he did.

A video shared by President Trump on Twitter Sunday includes a man who appears to be a Trump supporter saying “white power” in response to protesters.

In the video, apparently taken at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida, people wearing Trump shirts and with Trump signs on their golf carts drive by protesters yelling insults at them and about the president.

In one exchange — eight seconds into the two-minute video — a white man holding a sign that says “Make America Sane Again,” a reference to Trump’s campaign slogan, yells: “Where’s your white hood?” In response, a white man driving a golf cart with signs reading “Trump 2020” and “America First” yells back “white power.”

And male power! And rich white male power! All power to the rich white men; everyone else eat shit!

Trump retweeted the video before 8 a.m. ET Sunday and deleted his tweet around 11 a.m.

In a statement, Judd Deere, the White House deputy press secretary, did not apologize for the tweet or condemn the racist term but said instead: “President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

He didn’t hear “the one statement.” What one statement? You know. I don’t know; what “one”? The one.

Apart from anything else it’s illiterate, especially from a press secretary.

Jake Tapper asks a black senator if he finds it offensive, adding “I find it offensive and I’m white” – which I think he added so as not to seem to be pushing Scott to say it while he (Tapper) gets to stay neutral.

Scott says, oddly, “We can play politics, I’m not going to” – as if it’s possible not to “play politics” in this context. What the hell else can anyone play? It is political, it’s classic Trump filthy-political. It’s no good abstaining when Trump is playing all day every day.

Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle in Tribune:

Recently, of course, we saw people like JK Rowling using her own sexual assault as justification for discriminating against a group of people who were not responsible for it. Trans people are no more likely to be rapists; in fact, they are more likely to be victims of sexual assault themselves. That’s why, despite JK Rowling’s hate towards them, hundreds of trans people wrote to complain to The Sun when it trivialised her domestic abuse on a recent front page.

Of course Rowling isn’t advocating “discriminating against” trans people. It isn’t “discriminating against” people to say they are not a thing that they are not. It isn’t “discriminating against” people to say they are not horses or shovels or Canada or Mars or a bucket of gold coins.

Rowling expressed no “hate towards” trans people.

They can’t do any of this without lying, it seems, because the truth isn’t on their side.

We’re doing it wrong.

The number of confirmed new coronavirus cases per day in the US hit an all-time high of 40,000 according to figures released by Johns Hopkins on Friday, eclipsing the mark first set during one of the deadliest stretches in late April. It’s a resurgence that has led some governors to backtrack or at least pause the reopening of their states.

Wrong direction. Goal is down, not up.

… the Florida department of health reported that the state confirmed 8,942 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, breaking a record set earlier this week.

The Florida health department also reported a frightening rise in the rate of positive test results. On Thursday, 13.1% of test results come back positive, compared to 8.9% on Wednesday, confounding Donald Trump’s recent assertions, repeated on Thursday, that “if you did not do testing, you would not have cases”.

So…maybe…wearing masks would be a good idea?

On Friday, Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered a sharp reversal on reopening. He had pursued one of the most aggressive reopening schedules of any state and had not only resisted calls to order the wearing of masks but had refused until last week to let local governments take such measures.

Mandatory libertarianism.

And on Friday, just before the first White House coronavirus taskforce briefing in two months, the White House confirmed reports that Trump canceled his weekend trip his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Oh no, not his weekend golf trip!

He was severely criticized last month, when he went golfing over Memorial Day weekend as the US coronavirus death toll neared 100,000.

And there had been questions raised about whether Trump would have to self-quarantine in New Jersey because the state is currently requiring those who travel from states with high levels of community spread of coronavirus to do so for 14 days.

Earlier this week, Trump traveled to Arizona, which was included on New Jersey’s list of affected states.

Quarantine the shithead. Quarantine him forever.

Behold: an advertisement:

I find it interesting because it’s so in your face, so perverse (not perverted, mind, perverse), so nyah nyah. Saying “we mean every” about a conspicuously male male, with beard and hirsute chest and legs, decked out in dainty catch me-fuck me laydeez underwear. They’re not saying it about a man seriously trying to “dress as” a woman or to look like a woman or to convince anyone he’s a woman, they’re saying it about an unmistakable man with a “Fuck you, bitch” look on his face, dressed and posed like a prostitute.

It’s hard to unpick all the levels here. There’s the “you WILL agree that this is a woman” level, but there’s also the “haha obviously this is not a woman but we get to force you to say it is” level and the “if you don’t agree that he’s a woman he’ll kick you in the cunt, you cunt” level. There’s the “I will cut you” face coupled with the passivity of the clothes – it jars and it’s meant to jar and the whole point of the jarring is to taunt and threaten and insult and bully women.

And it is, apparently, from a company that makes “lingerie” – i.e. sexualized underwear for women.

There is also the level of “this is what makes someone a woman: wearing chase me-fuck me underwear and adopting a fuck me pose.” That’s all there is to being a woman: sexy underwear and passivity. It’s so determinative of being a woman that the hostile threatening male stare is overruled by the stockings.

There’s also the level of “women can’t possibly do this, women can’t not shave and not pluck and not paint and then pose in sexy underwear with hairy legs and a ‘fuck you’ stare, but men can” level. Women have to scrape their bodies clean of every trace of hair, even between their legs, and then draw lines where their eyebrows used to be, but men can just pull the stockings up over the wiry black hairs and then dare us to say a word.

“Pride Weeks” forsooth.

Dipshit lets us know what his priorities are.

As if.

He can’t just write new laws – he can’t write new laws at all. Congress is the legislative branch; he is not.

He’s so eager to see other people executed or given “long prison terms” for crimes they didn’t commit or for actions that are political acts as opposed to crimes. If it’s a crime to push down a statue of a Confederate (aka treasonous) general, what about the crime of putting up such a statue in the first place? And what about the crime of slavery? Eh?

I can’t wait to see this poisonous toad of a man disappear into his “tower” again.

Interesting…

In a new bombshell report, the New York Times says the US intelligence community has concluded Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to kill US troops.

What? Trump’s darling sweetheart Putin did that?

From the Times:

American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

Trump apparently doesn’t care.

The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

I guess he’s been too busy fuming about monuments and…uh…monuments.

The bosses still being irresponsible and reckless with the health of the population. “Do what seems best to you, it’s your choice, we wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, freedom freedom freedom, we couldn’t possibly comment.”

Vice President Mike Pence was asked what message he wanted to offer on wearing masks, as evidence suggests face coverings can limit the spread of coronavirus.

“Well, we think that the first principle is that people ought to listen to their state and local authorities,” the vice president said, declining to offer a federal endorsement on wearing masks.

What kind of stupid “first principle” is that? It’s geographic, it’s not a principle. The virus is the virus, it doesn’t care about state and local and national. How about just giving the best medical advice and never mind whether it’s local or national?

Assholes.

I’ve just seen a 5-word tweet that makes my blood run cold.

“Work is introducing pronoun pins.”

I think “is introducing” here means “wearing them is not optional.”

Why stop at pronouns? Why not pins to point out all the obvious? How about species? Nationality? Height and weight? Age? Address? Politics? Voting record? Grades? Tax history? Religion? Favorite foods?

Grown up people don’t want to walk around wearing labels telling the world what brand we are. I wouldn’t want to wear a pin saying “woman,” either, because duh. Plus…it’s work. It’s not home, it’s not the coffee shop, it’s not a clubhouse. It’s work. It’s already a place where people get to tell you what to do (unless you’re the owner or CEO), because that’s the nature of work, so adding creepy “pins” to the mix is not appropriate.

What’s Trump doing while Pence tells us everything is awesome on the pandemic front? Trump is raging about white supremacist statues again.

Moments ago, Trump sent a tweet sharing an FBI notice seeking information about those suspected of defacing the Andrew Jackson statue in Lafayette Square near the White House.

It’s interesting that the FBI thinks vandalization of a statue is a matter for the Violent Crimes Task Force. Don’t we consider violent crimes to be crimes against sentient beings? As opposed to statues?

But of course it’s even more interesting that Trump is so energized about vandalism against a statue of the man who committed a major genocide against the original inhabitants of the southern US, and so indifferent to a spreading pandemic that has killed over 120 thousand people in the US already.