Sometimes it can seem as if Trump almost gets it…is sort of kind of paying attention…is managing to look as if he’s doing his job for a few minutes – but then he always talks to someone else and it all falls apart again.

Midday [on Monday], Fauci and others gathered in the Oval Office to update Trump on the 30,000-person Phase 3 trial launched by Moderna. Trump later told reporters it was a “great meeting” and participants walked away believing the President was sincere in his efforts to convey more leadership on the outbreak.

“We had a lot of our wonderful doctors and researchers with me,” Trump said. “I think the meeting went really well.”

While the meeting focused almost exclusively on the vaccine trial, and not on Trump’s response to the virus more broadly, it seemed to participants like the President was engaged — unlike some previous meetings that became derailed with unrelated topics and complaints.

Hold your breath…tiptoe…nobody say anything – oops no it didn’t work.

But as the day progressed, Trump heard from several others who reinforced a different message than the one being offered by the administration’s health experts. His hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro — who recently published an op-ed in USA Today trashing Fauci without running it past the White House but was never formally reprimanded — traveled alongside Trump to North Carolina, where the President broke with health experts by calling on governors to reopen.

“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening,” Trump said, countering the advice being offered by Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx for states to rethink how they are lifting restrictions.

So the midday meeting might as well not have happened.

The same day, Trump spoke with Robert Herring, the chief executive of far-right OANN, about an unproven anti-malarial that Trump has long touted and even took himself, despite a lack of clear evidence on its efficacy in preventing or treating Covid.

“Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to President Trump about hydroxychloroquine,” Herring later wrote on Twitter. “I gave him a list of doctors we have interviewed. I know he wants to help & put people back to work. Hope he talks to real doctors & not Dr. ‘Farci.’ ”

Yes, it’s Fauci who’s not a real doctor and people who promote random medications for no clear reason who really know their medical stuff.

An item in the latest Week in the War on Women made my hair stand on end:

Twitter user, Sarah Stuart, shared her experience of an online gender workshop she attended.

Wait what? A workshop on “gender identity” for KIDS 6 TO 12???

That’s not a “workshop,” that’s indoctrination. That’s brainwashing. That’s grooming.

Participants received a Zoom meeting link, without password, and an email warning that adults must ‘remain silent observers’. Sarah Stuart reports that most of the children onscreen were without supervision and only one had an adult present.

The workshop trainer was a trans identified female and trans rights activist called Joshua Jernigan. Based in North Carolina, Jernigan founded the Gender Education Network, an organization with “A goal to educate everyone about gender diversity”.

I wonder how Josh feels about the receding hairline.

Jernigan told the watching children that JK Rowling’s recent statements were “harmful” and “wrong” and the ensuing workshop was full of ideological rhetoric; sex is a spectrum, “same-gender attraction” supplants homosexuality, being a woman is not defined by biology, “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are verboten etc. Jernigan also discussed hormones, surgery and social transitioning and told children that they can change their pronouns as often as they like; ‘Try it on and see if it fits’.

I read the whole thread. It’s creepy as fuck.

All bluster and no mask.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, has tested positive for coronavirus, a person familiar with the situation told CNN on Wednesday.

Gohmert has frequently refused to wear a mask while at the Capitol amid the pandemic. He has spent ample time on the House floor during votes speaking to aides and lawmakers — without a mask or social distancing.

Well he’s a Republican you see. Republicans are for statues of pro-slavery generals and federal agents beating up non-violent protesters, and against environmental protections and masks during a pandemic. Principle first!

Gohmert had been scheduled to fly aboard Air Force One on Wednesday with President Donald Trump to Midland, Texas, where the President is fundraising and touring an oil rig. He tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday morning during a pre-flight screening at the White House, a person familiar with the situation told CNN. Because of the positive test, Gohmert is not traveling with the President.

A senior Republican aide told CNN the test results have caused issues on the Hill where “a lot of staffers” were ordered to get tests before they can go to meetings and resume activity. Some are sequestering in their offices until they can get tested. Gohmert’s office notified Republican leaders, who notified House medical staff and the protocol kicked in for further notification, the GOP aide said.

Made all the more urgent by the fact that Gohmert mostly didn’t wear a mask.

Gohmert told CNN last month that he didn’t wear a mask because he had been tested and he didn’t yet have the virus. “But if I get it, you’ll never see me without a mask,” he said.

Which is idiotic, because you can spread it before you test positive, and you can also spread it after you test negative but before you get another test. It’s not the case that a negative test means “there is no chance that you will spread the virus before the next time we test you.”

He is just one of several conservative Republicans who have pushed back on mask-wearing, sometimes causing tension during committee meetings.

During Tuesday’s hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler urged a handful of Republican members to keep their masks on.

“I would remind Mr. Jordan, Mr. Biggs and Mr. Johnson to stop violating the rules of the committee, to stop violating the safety of the members of the committee, to stop holding themselves out as not caring by refusing to wear their masks,” the New York Democrat said, referring to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

But freedom.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, also responded to the news. “I’m concerned about the irresponsible behavior of many of the Republicans who have chosen to consistently flout well-established public health guidance, perhaps out of fealty to their boss, Donald Trump, who is the head of the anti-mask movement in America,” Jeffries said at a news conference. “That’s a concern.”

But freedom. Freedom freedom freedom. Our ancestors didn’t fight for freedom for white people only to be shackled by a damn face mask. Freedom freedom.

It’s time to beeeeeeeeeeeee

INSPIRED

Then you can return to earth.

Trump did a press conference of sorts.

That’s just what I thought when he said it. It’s such typical minimization. “They just don’t like my hair.” No no no Don it’s not your “personality” – repellent though that is. It’s you. It’s your hideous emptiness, your smallness, your self-obsession, your bluster, your lies, your lust for revenge, your brutality, your contempt for the law, your contempt for everyone who isn’t you – any one of us could go on this way for hundreds of words. You’re bad. You’re a bad bad human being. We can’t stand you because you’re so terrible in every way. That’s why we hate you.

“The woman you said is a great doctor…she says doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens.” “I thought she was very impressive.”

Just another normal day.

The lions don’t care

.

Wales’ first gay rugby team has criticised plans to ban trans women from playing women’s rugby.

That is, plans to ban men from playing women’s rugby. Men can have whatever fantasies about their own identities they like, but that doesn’t mean they can impose their fantasies on everyone else no matter what, and it especially doesn’t mean that when it’s a matter of the relative safety of women rugby players.

The sport’s governing body World Rugby is considering the move over “safety concerns” – claiming a female player is at a higher risk of being injured by a player that has gone through male puberty.

Because she is. Obviously. It’s not a mere “claim” and there’s no call for scare quotes on safety concerns – the concerns are real, and women’s safety does matter, believe it or not.

And in its report, published by the Guardian newspaper, it says trans women have significant physical advantages over biological women even after they take medication to lower testosterone.

However, if these proposals get the go-ahead then doubts surround where and where trans women are able to play competitive rugby.

Why do those doubts matter more than the fact that allowing men to play on women’s teams will inevitably cause injury to the women? Why don’t women matter?

Cardiff Lions, Wales’ first gay inclusive rugby team, have slammed the proposals – and said the plans effectively amount to a ban on trans women playing the sport – because they would not be able to play men’s rugby either.

Why does that matter more than women’s safety? Why don’t the Cardiff Lions care about that?

World Rugby’s 38-page draft document, produced by its transgender working group, said there is likely to be “at least a 20-30% greater risk” of injury when a female player is tackled by someone who has gone through male puberty. It argues the advantage is so great – and the potential consequences for the safety of participants in tackles, scrums and mauls [also so great] – it should mean that welfare concerns should be prioritised. And the document claims those advantages are not reduced when a trans women takes testosterone-suppressing medication- “with only small reductions in strength and no loss in bone mass or muscle volume or size after testosterone suppression”.

But the Cardiff Lions don’t care about all that. Not their problem.

Trump in 1993. He was a horrible shit then too.

Indian Country Today wrote about it in 2016:

In 1993, Donald Trump appeared before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources to offer testimony on Indian gaming. 1993 Donald Trump bears a striking resemblance to Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, in terms of demeanor and language – Trump’s oral testimony is consistent with the language he has used throughout his campaign for President.

He really does. He’s rude and confident and belligerent, just as he is now. He’s less dull-witted, but every bit as snotty.

Most of Trump’s testimony focused on Indian gaming itself, and his perception that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act granted tribes an unfair advantage over his own gaming enterprises.

But, it was another part of Trump’s testimony that caught my attention. He questioned the legitimacy of Indian tribes based upon the physical appearance of their members. Here is an exchange he had with Rep. Miller of California:

Mr. Miller*. Is this you discussing Indian blood: “We are going to judge people by whether they have Indian blood,” whether they are qualified to run a gaming casino or not?*

Mr. Trump*. That probably is me, absolutely, because I’ll tell you what, if you look—if you look at some of the reservations that you have approved—you, sir, in your great wisdom, have approved— will tell you right now, they don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians. Now maybe we say politically correct or not politically correct. They don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to Indians, and a lot of people are laughing at it, and you are telling how tough it is, how rough it is, to get approved. Well, you go up to Connecticut, and you look. Now, they don’t look like Indians to me, sir.*

He was such a shit as a child that his parents had to send him to military school. He was this kind of shit in 1993. He’s that kind of shit now.

The Daily Beast has more on Stella Immanuel.

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. 

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Immanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court at the “White Coat Summit,” a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America’s Frontline Doctors and dispute the medical consensus on the novel coronavirus. The event was organized by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots, which is backed by wealthy Republican donors.

Ok why? I still don’t get it. How is this a Republican thing or a rich people thing? How does it benefit them? How does it tickle their right-wing pleasure center? How is this political in the first place?

Unless…is it as simple as: Donald Trump is ignorant and stupid, therefore we need to big up things that are stupid and rooted in ignorance, so that he won’t look so out on a limb with his stupid ignorance? Is that it?

Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren’t necessary, claiming that she and her staff had avoided contracting COVID-19 despite wearing medical masks instead of the more secure N95 masks.

“Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure,” Immanuel said. 

Toward the end of Immanuel’s speech, the event’s organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. But footage of the speech captured by Breitbart was a hit online, becoming a top video on Facebook and amassing roughly 13 million views…

And getting Don Junior suspended from Twitter.

Immanuel is a registered physician in Texas, according to a Texas Medical Board database, and operates a medical clinic out of a strip mall next to her church, Firepower Ministries. 

Ah, a strip mall clinic. That sounds confidence-inspiring.

In sermons posted on YouTube and articles on her website, Immanuel claims that medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility, and impotence are caused by sex with “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives”—a phenomenon Immanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dreamworld. 

“They are responsible for serious gynecological problems,” Immanuel said. “We call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband,” Immanuel said of the medical issues in a 2013 sermon.

Definitely want to take medical advice from that doctor.

Guess who’s back!

President Donald Trump’s attempt to project a more serious tone about the coronavirus lasted for about a week.

On Tuesday, he resumed spreading misinformation about how to fight the virus and amplifying criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who said he’d keep his head down and do his job.

Social media platforms worked to remove multiple versions of a video promoted by Trump that included unproven claims about treating people who test positive for the virus, but only after more than 17 million people had seen one version of it.

What’s the point of being president if you can’t con millions of people into poisoning themselves with an off-label medication?

Trump retweeted a series of tweets advocating for the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to be used in COVID-19 patients, including a video of a doctor claiming to have successfully used the drug on hundreds of patients.

…

Trump also shared a post from the Twitter account for a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, a former top White House adviser to Trump, accusing Fauci of misleading the public over hydroxychloroquine.

He’s helping, ok? You’ve got your medical people giving medical-type advice and then you’ve got your inspirational leader people giving wacko advice. Put the two together and you’ve got yourself a real fix!

Fauci had to go on “Good Morning America” to say trials have indicated Trump’s quack remedy doesn’t work for the virus.

Trump shared a tweet of a video that’s circulating on social media pushing misleading claims about hydroxychloroquine. Earlier in the pandemic, Trump advocated vigorously for hydroxychloroquine to be used as a treatment, or even a preventative, telling people, “What have you got to lose?”

Which is another sign of his cognitive poverty: if you think about it for even a second you can figure out what we’ve got to lose. It’s not good advice to tell people to chug random medications because “what have you got to lose?”

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube began scrubbing their sites of the video Monday because it includes misleading claims about hydroxychloroquine, and glosses over the dangers of taking it. But dozens of versions of the video remain live on their platforms, with conservative news outlets, groups and internet personalities sharing it on their pages, where users have viewed them millions of times.

…

Twitter also said it is working to remove the video. A tweet from the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., describing one version of the video as a “must watch!!!” Monday night was also taken down by the platform. Twitter put Trump Jr.’s account on a 12-hour timeout, meaning he cannot tweet or retweet during that period. He’s also required to delete the tweet before he will be reinstated. Twitter declined to say when the timeout began.

…

In the video, Dr. Stella Immanuel, a physician from Houston, Texas, promotes hydroxychloroquine as a sure-fire cure for the coronavirus. She claims to have successfully treated 350 people “and counting,” including some with underlying medical conditions.

Some with no heads, even.

Joy Reid is live-tweeting the Barr hearing. It’s as sinister as you’d expect.

Then Jim Jordan is yelling something, and she wonders why he’s always yelling.

Well you see when they do it it’s Law Norder.

What a prince.

Oh does he.

Awwww, ‘doreable indeed.

The Daily Mail (sorry) reviews Abigail Shrier’s book on the fad for girls to decide they are boys:

The picture that emerges is something much more complex than the familiar narrative of ‘born in the wrong body’. None of these girls appeared to be trans until their teenage years. Some are lesbians – but as one young woman explains to Shrier, being a lesbian is ‘just not very cool… it’s a porn category’, whereas being trans is celebrated. Others have eating disorders or issues with self-harm: for them, taking male hormones and having surgery to remove their breasts seems like another way to attack the body.

Lesbian is a porn category? Says it all, doesn’t it.

Shrier argues that this is being driven by social contagion. Trans identification spreads through schools, through friendship groups, through ‘influencer’ videos that offer a rose-tinted take on transition. But the medical pathway is not something to be taken lightly. Hormone treatments lead to lifelong infertility alongside other health problems. What’s euphemistically called ‘top surgery’ is actually an elective double mastectomy, while ‘bottom surgery’ to masculinise genitals is rarely undertaken and subject to heinous complications.

Not to mention all the rest of it. It just seems so much more trouble than simply being yourself without worrying about gender rules.

There was no clip when I first posted this, only the statement of fact. I wanted to see and hear how he said it – whether with a pretense of regret and mention of a full schedule, or not. Now I know. Look at how this evil pig said it.

Of course he won’t.

Right now:

Oh goody, another private “militia” is born.

The Utah Citizens’ Alarm is only a month old, and yet it already boasts 15,000-plus members.

The citizen militia’s recruits wear military fatigues and carry assault rifles. Their short-term goal, they say, is to act as a physical presence of intimidation to deter protesters from becoming violent and destroying the state of Utah. Their long-term goal: to arm and prepare the state of Utah against underground movements they believe will incite civil war.

But the physical presence of a “militia” wearing military fatigues and carrying assault rifles would not merely deter protesters from becoming violent and destroying Utah, it would deter them/us/me from protesting at all. If I saw a bunch of guys in fatigues carrying assault rifles at a protest I’d be out of there before I’d drawn another breath. I don’t see random self-appointed guys with guns as protective or safeguarding, I see them as a terrifying threat. I see the cops that way too, to a considerable extent (the guns have always made me nervous, my whole life), but at least I know they are answerable to higher ups and the organization and the courts. Volunteer cops carrying assault rifles, not so much.

The group was conceived in reaction to a Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality organized by different groups in Provo, Utah, on 29 June. That day, a white protester pulled out a gun and shot another white man, who was not protesting but driving his vehicle into the protest route. Two shots were fired, and one hit the driver in the arm. Protesters claim the shooting was in self-defence because the driver was hitting marchers; the police found this claim to be unsubstantiated.

When Casey Robertson, 47, watched a video of the incident, he felt outraged that this could happen in his “little town of Provo”.

…

Utah Citizens’ Alarm has since organized regular military-style trainings for its members. Robertson says he has been tipped off “by secret sources within the government and law enforcement” that underground organizations like antifa are being funded by Isis, and are using groups like BLM to wreak havoc in the community to destroy American cities and ideals. Even if none of these theories stand up to scrutiny, he is dead set on not letting it happen.

That is, he has been told a pack of lies by people who claim to be law enforcement, or he claims he has, but never mind that it’s a pack of lies, he is dead set on threatening protesters. Brilliant. Wonderful arrangement.

This already has a chilling effect on protests: organizers have begun cancelling protests out of fear of Utah Citizens’ Alarm coming and escalating the already heated emotions. So far, militia members remain unchallenged, using their second amendment rights to openly bear arms in public throughout the state.

What I’m saying. Of course it has a chilling effect.

Jason Stevens, of Utah’s American Civil Liberties Union, stressed the importance of the historical context in what happened in the civil rights movement of the 1960s when armed groups, militias, local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, white citizens councils, organizations both official and unofficial took it upon themselves to defend what they saw as their rights and property with violent and systemic intimidation and threats to African Americans and others in those areas.

Yes, that is important. Timothy McVeigh is another important item in this list. Heavily armed right-wing terrorizers have a long history in the US, and no, of course we don’t see them as there to “protect” us.

Additionally, lines between the second and first amendment are complicated, especially as open-carry laws in Utah make it legal for groups of heavily armed individuals to gather in places where the first amendment is being honored, such as protests.

“If the right to bear arms is overriding the right to free speech, that may be cause for concern,” said Dr RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah. “Our constitutional doctrine hasn’t yet had the chance to really tussle with the question of what the presence of guns does to a free speech event. Short of more overt threats of violence, we usually protect protesters with guns in the same ways we protect protesters without them. But if the express goal of the armed individuals is to intimidate people who might otherwise share their views, that’s especially troubling.”

I don’t bother with that purported distinctions. If there are random freelancers with guns on the scene, I’m not staying. I assume I’m far from the only person who sees it that way. Yes, guys with guns will shut down free speech. You can count on it.

Dan Froomkin points out that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to make the people at the NY Times very nervous.

So rather than report on how Ocasio-Cortez’s riveting, viral speech on the House floor on Thursday was a signal moment in the fight against abusive sexism, Times congressional reporters Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson filed a story full of sexist double standards and embraced the framing of her critics by casting her as a rule-breaker trying to “amplify her brand.”

Here’s her speech in case you need a refresher.

Then consider that the Times described the speech as “her most norm-shattering moment yet,” leading with the fact that “she took to the House floor to read into the Congressional Record a sexist vulgarity that Representative Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, had used to refer to her.”

The point is not that it’s a vulgarity. The point is that it’s misogynist, and it’s meant to intimidate. Men don’t call women fucking bitches for the hell of it, they do it to express intimidating rage and hatred. Vulgarity is completely beside the point.

A critical “tell” in the Times’s coverage – something perhaps only fellow journalists would fully appreciate at first – was how the paper had previously avoided directly quoting Yoho’s particular words, but did so now:

“In front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me, and I quote: ‘A fucking bitch,’” she said, punching each syllable in the vulgarity.

You’d think the whole thing was her idea. It’s Yoho who said it; she was quoting him. It’s as if they decided to say she punched every syllable to make her sound like the aggressor. She did not in fact punch anything, nor did she call anyone insulting names.

In the first Times article on the matter, on Tuesday, Broadwater described Yoho’s words as “a pair of expletives” – noting that Ocasio-Cortez “sought to turn the insult to her advantage.”

Oh yes, what a whore she is, trying to make money from being called a fucking bitch by an adult man who works alongside her in Congress.

James Fallows, the renowned Atlantic national correspondent, asked in a tweet: “WHY should these words appear in a quote from AOC, at whom they were hatefully directed, rather than one from Rep. Yoho, who actually said them?”

Um…to make her look bad? To shame her? Am I close?

The Times reporters wrote that after her speech, “Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who excels at using her detractors to amplify her own political brand, invited a group of Democratic women in the House to come forward to express solidarity with her.”

The whore. How dare she invite a group of Democratic women colleagues to come forward to express solidarity with her? That’s so brand-amplifying. A decent modest woman would say nothing about it and pretend it never happened, and nice Mr. Yoho could get away without so much as a whispered rebuke. Maybe if they put her in a burqa they would feel less anxious?

Hamza Shaban, a business reporter for the Washington Post, called attention to the similarities between the Times’s framing of the story and the story’s own description, toward the end, of how Republicans have demonized Ocasio-Cortez.

She should just put up with it, like a nice prim quiet woman from 1955.

In fact, the double standards were everywhere. New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister, responding to Harris’s tweet, noted: “Women’s anger at male power abuse [is] regularly presented as path to self-advancement for the women. Voicing fury at systemic degradation is read as opportunistic. Whereas men’s abusive behavior rarely understood as fundamental to how they attained & maintain THEIR power. But it is!”

Read the whole thing.

H/t Tim Harris

You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, ya know?

The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.

Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.

He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.

Well that’s certainly urgent at this time of a pandemic, massive job loss, people on the edge of being unable to pay their rents or mortgages, children unable to go to school, and oh by the way climate change hasn’t paused to wait for all this to go by.

“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.

“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”

On the proposition, yes, but on the reality, obviously not. It’s easy to say noble things, but they count for less if you are at the same time paying for your luxuries out of the forced unpaid labor of other people.

In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.

Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.

Yeah? Like kill all the Jews for instance? Like invade a small impoverished country and torture most of its population to death and steal all its wealth? Views like that? Especially from serving US senators, who could actually attempt to put such “views” into action?

I’m thinking no, Sulzberger didn’t mean that. Let’s come up with a rule: the no-Cotton rule. Works for me.

What we now say when we mean “shut up, bitch.”

Updating: Oh look there’s more.

Very adult, very thoughtful, very progressive and feminist and reasonable and fair-minded.

Also the other David.

Than “Ok Karen” and an eyeroll. Yes, I think so too.

Updating 2:

Skepticism done well, yes indeed – you can’t get much better skepticism than “Ok, Karen” and an eyeroll emoji.

No, actually, we approve of violence against women.

Poland is to withdraw from a European treaty aimed at preventing violence against women, the country’s justice minister announced on Saturday.

Zbigniew Ziobro said the document, known as the Istanbul Convention, was “harmful” because it required schools to teach children about gender.

Meaning what? That there are two sexes? That one of the sexes is on average bigger and stronger than the other? That the stronger one has historically dominated the other one? That it takes one of each to make a baby? Aren’t they going to learn all that in any case?

He added that reforms introduced in the country in recent years provided sufficient protection for women.

Easy for him to say.

Mr Ziobro said the government would formally begin the process of withdrawing from the treaty, which was ratified in 2015, on Monday.

He argued that the convention violated the rights of parents and “contains elements of an ideological nature”.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and its coalition partners are closely aligned to the Catholic Church, and the government has promised to promote traditional family values.

Traditional family values like men dominating women? Like enforcing the dominance with violence? Those traditional family values?

Thousands of people, mostly women, took to the streets of the capital Warsaw on Friday to campaign against the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.

“The aim is to legalise domestic violence,” Marta Lempart, an organiser of a march in the city, told Reuters news agency.

Trad fam vals, you know.