Peter Boghossian raging at “western” feminists for what Allah-botherers do to women.

Don’t play the clip. Word is it’s as horrible as you’d expect.

I’m a feminist, and I suppose I’m “western.”

Not one but two men beating women in a women’s race.

Originally a comment by KBPlayer on The magic in everyday life.

During the Edinburgh Festival I saw Jenny Lindsay in a talk with a guy called Darren McGarvey. McGarvey was host of a series of talks on the Industrial Trauma Complex, i.e. how people frame their traumas, and the dangers of airing them (see a quote below about the lived experience and how airing it can harm the sufferer). McGarvey is from a very tough Glasgow background (and looks it) and a recovering addict. He got known as a rapper and then as writer and talker on social issues eg The Poverty Safari and The Social Distance Between Us, about class poverty and class differences.

The talk was well attended, almost all women including the former MP Joanna Cherry, who is known in these parts for her doughtiness on the gender issue. I don’t remember much about the substance of what was said – Jenny repeated the story of her hounding and the general shoddiness of her fellow creatives. What got me was McGarvey, who is known as a fearless commentator on social affairs, was so tentative in introducing Jenny, who in comparison to his rough guy’s looks and scruffy clothes, was smartly dressed and well groomed. He wanted to assure us that no offence was meant, that if anyone felt vulnerable they should be careful. He was full of trigger warnings.

Christ, I thought, we have bought a ticket and this is the Edinburgh Fringe, supposedly the arts festival where you think outside the envelope and push the box, and we are supposed to react like a bunch of Morningside Matrons circa 1972 at the flash of a breast at an experimental theatre.

As it was, Jenny was warmly received and I hope she made some money after the crappy time she’s been having. I think her book will do well and she should get some more gigs.

Concerning lived experience… I think this is very good. As an offshoot of this how much of the creative arts are about supposedly authentic autobiography. In one form it’s sharing the trauma, in another it’s where influencers create an instagrammable life and can never enjoy an experience for its own sake, but must submit it to an saudience.

“I am one of those people often referred to as having ‘lived experience’ – a label given to those of us who are not professionally qualified to assert the things we do who are instead authenticated by the adversities we have suffered. If you spend enough time online, you’re sure to encounter someone like me.

We have strong opinions which we often express with passion and conviction. We believe our experiences are important. That they may shed light on certain social and cultural challenges, backfilling the knowledge gaps so evident among a well-meaning managerial class. From addiction, to homelessness, criminal justice, gender-based violence, racism, housing, mental health and trauma, our lived experiences, which take the form of stories, are regarded by many (and by ourselves) as the solutions to a complex puzzle.

Missing pieces which, when truly grasped by decision makers and wider society, could help shape a more compassionate, informed, and inclusive future. But that’s not the whole story. Our lived experience is also a commodity. One which adds immeasurable value to workplaces, academic research, and media enterprises dominated by middle class professionals.

Every day lived experience permeates culture, driving engagement on social media platforms, generating millions of views, clicks and comments. Posts and status updates, online think-pieces, video essays, news segments and shortform clips online are disseminated, debated, and deconstructed.

In a free market, our willingness to eagerly supply the rapacious demand for authenticity and social realism can certainly leave us with a sense that we are making waves. That we are having an impact and making a difference. Regrettably, the allure of presenting ourselves as recovered (because that’s the nice little bow most people want their affirming lived experience testimonies wrapped up in) may pull us further from the truth of who we are and what we suffer from. In essence, by falsely portraying ourselves as the finished article, our vulnerability increases.

We may be prompted onto a platform to air our trauma publicly by others who’ve done no such thing, and are therefore ill-equipped to provide the necessary insight, support, or aftercare we might require. Our expectations may inadvertently rise, sensing we are on the cusp of some breakthrough which has previously eluded us, only to be dealt a crushing blow upon the realisation that people we thought were friends and allies (because we often attach intensely to anyone who gives us the time of day), were simply associates engaged in a transaction of some kind. And we may experience the nip of negative consequences, when our stories reach a level of prominence we did not foresee, provoking unpleasant reactions in others, be they strangers we’ll never meet or friends and family members who share neither our recollections of what happened, nor our desire to make a public display of it.

This lived experience movement ought to come with some caveats, not simply for the benefit those of us putting it all out there, but also to people on the lower slopes of their own recovery from trauma, who look those of us with a platform for an examples to follow, like we did our favourite artists.

There is a darker side to this lived experience moment, which must be articulated with great care, so as not to stoke unnecessary tumult. Though I suspect those currently riding the wave will find some of what I am going to say extremely challenging, no matter how delicately its put.

So let me first say this: I do not believe people with lived experience are being deliberately exploited by anyone; we have agency and participate willingly in most cases. I wish to cast no aspersions on organisations which have in recent years sought to platform, collaborate with, or even employ the lived experienced.

My concern is that we, the individuals being invited to share intimate details of our lives, are often not as well as we believe. We are often not as firm in our footing in life as we appear. Indeed, the demons of childhood trauma we’d all like to think long banished, wait patiently. We worry that showing vulnerability may result in a withdrawal of interest – abandonment.

We are afraid to assert ourselves and our needs, so make commitments we are unsure we can fulfil while accepting terms and conditions we often sense are unfair – conflict averse and overly compliant. And we often don’t understand the fullness of the consequences that may lie ahead when we agree to sing for our suppers – impulsivity.

Our desire to help others, to participate, to be seen to be achieving, and, yes, to gain affection and security and love, is often so overwhelming that we push aside any lingering doubt as to our fitness to engage in the risky public exhibitionism which may come to define us.

And let’s not forget, we decant our traumas into a rowdy and unforgiving public square where, once disclosed, they cannot be un-disclosed. “

The tedium gets ever more tedious.

A women’s college in Virginia has instituted an admissions policy that bars transgender women next school year because of a new interpretation of the founder’s will.

Sweet Briar College, a private women’s liberal arts school, said the policy stems from the legally binding will of its founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams, who died in 1900. Sweet Briar’s leadership said the document requires it to “be a place of ‘girls and young women.’”

So in other words they’re not changing anything, they’re just pointing out that the college is still a girls’ college, as it’s been all along.

The phrase “must be interpreted as it was understood at the time the Will was written,” Sweet Briar’s president and board chair wrote in a letter earlier this month to the college community. The new policy requires an applicant to “confirm that her sex assigned at birth is female, and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman.”

…

The new guidelines are facing criticism from some students and most faculty. They warn the politically fraught policy could repel potential students — not just transgender women — when women’s colleges have been closing, going co-ed or merging with other schools. Sweet Briar nearly shuttered in 2015.

…

Association President Isabella Paul, a senior who identifies as nonbinary, told the AP that at least 10% of students use different pronouns and wouldn’t fit in the policy’s description of women. “And there are allies here who may identify as women but have friends and lovers and family members who are nonbinary, genderqueer and transgender,” Paul said. “So this is also affecting their pride in their institution.”

Ah yes pronouns, and women who identify as non-binary, and friends and lovers and family members who have their own luxury gender identities – add it all up and you get There Are No Women Left so you might as well admit it and give up. Women are so last century and let’s pretend they just plain don’t exist anymore. That will be Utopia.

Women’s colleges in the U.S. began to admit transgender women about 10 years ago, including Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Spelman College, a historically Black school in Atlanta.

“What it means to be a woman isn’t static,” Mount Holyoke’s then-President Lynn Pasquerella told the AP in 2014. “Early feminists argued that reducing women to their biological functions was a foundation of women’s oppression.”

What it means to be a woman isn’t static – ok great so let’s change it to mean “slave born to push out babies and submit to men.” Cool?

Nicholas Hite, a senior attorney with LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal, said Sweet Briar’s policy could be problematic because it explicitly attempts to define for current students what it means to “live and identify as a woman.”

“That’s something that every cis and trans woman should be able to decide for herself,” Hite said.

Right. Every man should be able to decide for himself that he knows what it means to “live and identify as a woman” and that he is a woman and that all women who dispute him are men and should be punished for getting in his way. That is a very good plan and I am very clever.

The faculty senate president said the new policy will likely shrink the pool of already precious applicants.

“It really excludes any student who would be offended by those positions … who doesn’t want to be in a place where discrimination is codified in this way,” Brown said. “I think it’s a financially disastrous decision for the college.”

Yes it’s the height of evil to know the difference between women and men.

Another woman marked out for silencing:

As a self-styled witch, Dr Alice Tarbuck offers online Tarot card readings for £50 an hour and courses in how to embrace the ‘magic’ in everyday life. Her freelance lessons run throughout the year and are described as ‘perfect for anyone with an interest in the history, ethics and practice of witchcraft’. But the rest of the time the author and poet has another role – as a ‘literature officer’ for controversial arts quango Creative Scotland, currently at the centre of a political firestorm.

…

Her role was to provide backing for writers as part of Creative Scotland’s mission to help people and organisations to ‘make work of quality and ambition that enriches life in Scotland for everyone’. But Dr Tarbuck used her position for a very different purpose – an attempt to suppress a ‘gender-critical’ book, which raised concern about radical trans rights activism, and which she deemed to be transphobic – more of which later.

She contacted at least one bookshop and asked its managers not to stock the title – Hounded: Women, Harms and The Gender Wars, by Jenny Lindsay – which ‘charts the often hidden and unspoken harms women face for prioritising and defending sex-based language and rights’. Ms Lindsay was alerted to Dr Tarbuck’s intervention and made a formal complaint against the literature officer – who says she enjoys ‘getting to be hands-on, helping to make authors’ work the best it could be’.

Unless, of course, the author in question has the unmitigated temerity to know that men are not women.

Some 147 people work for the organisation, including four in the public relations department plus the 24-strong board and ‘senior leadership team’ headed by Mr Munro, who is on a salary of £125,000-£130,000 with a pension pot worth £470,000. Their job is to help artists such as Ms Lindsay, the writer who penned the book that sparked such a visceral reaction from Dr Tarbuck.

Ms Lindsay is exactly the sort of artist Creative Scotland was set up to help – and she needed all the support she could get. Five years after trans rights activists led a hate campaign that destroyed her livelihood, the poet had fought back with a new book on the ‘hounding’ phenomenon. Ms Lindsay wrote in the Mail last year about her ordeal, which began after she objected to a call from a male writer for ‘violent action’ against lesbians at a Pride march.

Now why would any woman object to male writers calling for violent action against lesbians at a Pride march? Isn’t it universally acknowledged that men are allowed, indeed encouraged, to threaten uppity women with violence?

She announced this July that Hounded would be published in October. Two days later, Dr Tarbuck contacted at least one bookshop to demand that they refuse to stock it.

Ms Lindsay has learned to be stoical but admits she ‘wasn’t prepared for someone with serious gatekeeping power using her position to attempt to undermine both my ability to forge a new partnership with independent bookstores, and for this to be treated as in any way a normal thing to do for any writer, never mind one in Tarbuck’s position’.

And it’s all the more astounding given that Tarbuck herself is a woman. One woman writes a book objecting to men calling for violence against women, and another woman hastens to use her influence to tell bookstores to refuse to stock it. “Hello, bookstore? Do not stock this book that objects to men calling for violence against women. I can make things bad for you if I want to, I have power, I’m a bigwig at Creative Scotland.”

Furthermore, Creative Scotland apparently told the Mail that it had had a word with Tarbuck and informed Lindsay of the fact and Lindsay had said she was “content with the process.”

But Ms Lindsay insists that she did not know the outcome until the Mail informed her.

So Creative Scotland simply told a brazen lie? Unless you believe their account rather than hers. I’m finding it difficult to believe their account.

Creative Scotland refused to say whether Dr Tarbuck had tried to pressure any other bookshops into boycotting Ms Lindsay’s book.

Earlier this month, it emerged that an influential arts charity which told bookshops not to sell titles written by gender-critical authors had secured Creative Scotland funding. The quango awarded a grant worth more than £64,300 to Literature Alliance Scotland (LAS).

LAS, Scotland’s largest literary network, was thrown into turmoil after a statement was posted on its website claiming ‘Terfs’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) – a derogatory term for those who do not believe that trans women are women – were in league with fascists and calling on venues not to offer them a public platform.

Godalmighty, it just gets worse and worse and worse. Is there something in the water in Scotland or what? They’ll be going full Taliban at this rate.

The courts are forcing people to lie on pain of arrest and/or massive fines.

A podcast episode of Hoss and Hopf had to be deleted by court order because the moderators called a trans-identified man “a man” and used male pronouns to refer to him. The podcasters may be facing potential prison time or a fine of up to €250,000.

Germany thinks men who pretend to be women are the Jews. Nuh uh. The people being punished for not saying men are women are the Jews. (Not literally, obviously, but in the sense of being the party that is being treated like scum.)

In the controversial podcast episode, the hosts discussed the case of Laura Holstein, formerly known as Nicolas. Holstein, a balding male who now identifies as a “woman,” has made multiple headlines over the past few months related to him demanding access to female spaces. Most recently, Holstein, with the support of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, has been pursuing legal action against a female-only gym in Bavaria.

So, he’s a man who enjoys bullying women into calling him a woman. We’re familiar with the type.

In a post to social media, Hossainpour posted screenshots of the letter they received from the court. Among the orders made in the document are that the two hosts are prohibited from “distributing, publishing or having third parties distribute or publish” statements that correctly sex Holstein.

Courts are telling people to lie – and not just any lie, but the lie that members of the dominant/domineering caste are actually members of the dominated caste. It’s a peculiarly loathsome lie, yet it’s hugely popular right now.

In the court’s letter, the hosts were accused of violating Holstein’s “personal rights” by referring to him as male, because he is “legally and socially recognized as a woman.”

Hossainpour explained further: “It is noteworthy that the court saw an ‘extraordinary urgency’ here – as if the use of biologically correct terms represented an immediate danger that could not be postponed. One inevitably wonders whether other, perhaps actually urgent cases had to take a back seat for this.” 

Urgency forsooth. It’s hard to think of things that are less urgent.

In addition to being forced to delete the episode, the hosts are facing a €250,000 fine for violating the law and, if this cannot be paid, up to six months in prison. If the offense is repeated, they could be handed a two year prison sentence.

That’s a lot of money…all for telling the truth.

Is it bonkers to ban outdoor smoking?

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking.

The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would potentially prohibit tobacco use outside pubs and restaurants, including on pavements. The restrictions would come on top of existing plans to gradually outlaw smoking year by year.

While the latter proposal was devised under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives argued restrictions on outdoor smoking were about “social control”, with Priti Patel – among those standing to replace Sunak as Tory leader – calling them “beyond stupid”.

Well let’s wait a minute here. Lots of restrictions are about social control, because that’s the whole point. There are things we don’t want people doing to us, so we restrict those things.

What is smoking after all? It’s not any kind of necessity. It’s not something people have to do to live or thrive. It’s rather the opposite – something some people like to do despite the fact that it’s bad for their health.

Ok so it’s a pleasure, an optional pleasure. Other things being equal, of course optional pleasures should not be banned, but in the case of smoking, other things are obviously not equal. Smoking is bad for the people who do it, as well as for the people who don’t.

But maybe there’s some benefit to smoking that balances out the harm it does?

Maybe. What is it? What is that benefit?

Damned if I know. In theory it’s a form of pleasure; people do it because they like it. But it’s a very odd thing to do for pleasure when you think about it. “Let’s inhale some harsh hot smoke!”

Word is that nicotine triggers a pleasure reaction in the brain, and that’s why it’s addictive, but do smokers in general look as if they’re having a really fun time while they’re smoking? Like hell they do. They look about as thrilled as fentanyl addicts do when folded in half at a bus stop.

Smokers keep smoking because it’s addictive, of course. It could be true that they also derive genuine, otherwise unattainable pleasure from it, but the view from outside is the actual pleasure is barely detectable.

In short the plus side isn’t much of a plus. The negative side is very negative indeed. Smoking definitely affects non-participants as well as participants. Nevertheless there is outrage.

The plans were met with despair by the pub industry, which claimed restrictions on outdoor smoking could harm a fragile sector still recovering from Covid. However, health experts backed the idea, while polling showed it had majority support among every demographic and voting group apart from Reform UK supporters.

And pub owners.

The measures would be included in an already-announced tobacco and vapes bill, which intends to gradually make all smoking illegal by prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after January 2009. When this was announced in July’s king’s speech, it did not mention changes to outdoor smoking.

As public health is devolved, the measures would apply to only England, with the other UK nations deciding if they wanted to follow suit.

Asked about the report during a visit to Paris, Starmer did not deny the plans. “My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking,” he said.

“That is a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it is a burden on the taxpayer. So, yes, we are going to take decisions in this space, more details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we’ve got to take action to reduce the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer.”

Preventable deaths versus the kind of joy you see in your basic smoker getting a fix.

I just want to underline this trendy new brand of feminism.

What she says:

I’m so baffled by terfs – trans exclusionary radical feminists. I don’t understand how anyone takes them seriously when they’re so fucking ugly.

How much more feminist can you be?

Thanks Mr Menno.

Ah yes the “sex workers” – especially the ones who happen to be children. Julie Bindel in Al Jazeera:

In recent decades, so-called “sex workers’ rights” campaigners working to decriminalise pimping and buying of sex have attached themselves, just like trans rights activists, to the movement for the rights of same sex attracted people. This was a logical – and highly beneficial – move on their part. Being seen as part of a proud, widely-respected social justice campaign undoubtedly helps their efforts to perpetuate the myth that “sex work is work” and “prostitution is liberating”. 

One of the more…er…surprising moments of the hostile divorce between Freethought Blogs and me was when Greta Christina and her enforcers labeled me a big meany to “sex workers.” Won’t somebody please think of the pimps?

Their acceptance into what came to be called the “LGBTQ+” movement, however, has been incredibly harmful to the most vulnerable members of society, and especially children.

Recently in California, for example, so called LGBTQ+ activists have successfully mounted opposition to planned increased penalties for adults soliciting sex from prostituted children.

In April this year, Republican Senator Shannon Grove put forward a bill that would have made soliciting a minor for sex, or agreeing to engage in any form of commercial sex with a child, a felony offence, carrying a mandatory jail time and a requirement for sex offender registration for repeat offenders.

“The crime of purchasing a child, of any age, for sex in the state of California should be a prison felony,” said Grove. However, LGBTQ+ activists, opposed the bill citing concerns about “unintended consequences”. They claimed that increased penalties for those who abuse minors caught up in the sex trade will affect the LGBTQ+ community “disproportionately”.

Meaning members of “the LGBTQ+ community” are disproportionately abusing minors in the sex trade, and “activists” are defending that. How very progressive.

You might think that harsher penalties for buying and selling children for sex should be a no-brainer, but these activists argued that  “studies have shown that LGBTQ+ people, particularly gay and transgendered individuals, are more likely to be charged with sex offences compared to their heterosexual counterparts”. They went on to state that “LGBTQ+ individuals are nine times more likely to be charged with sex crimes, and are thus more likely to be incarcerated – which will in turn lead to increased difficulties in finding housing and employment.”

If these here LGBTQ+ individuals are nine times more likely to be committing sex crimes against children then maybe the activists should be rebuking them rather than trying to help them continue committing sex crimes against children. Wouldn’t you think?

Who would have thought that in the US state of California, it would be this difficult to protect children from men wanting to purchase them for sex? And why is the California LGBTQ+ community trying to frame soliciting of children for sex as part of a sexual identity rather than a depraved, inexcusable crime?

Why indeed. Who knew the enigmatic “+” meant pimping out children? No wonder it’s enigmatic.

That people are advocating for decriminalisation of prostitution, and lenient sentences for those who buy sex from minors, in the name of protecting the rights of gay and trans-identified men, means something has gone terribly wrong with the movement for lesbian and gay rights. However it is dressed up, this is nothing more than child abuse apologism. It should be countered, for the benefit of children as well as lesbians and gays who want the movement for their rights to be urgently divorced from harmful prostitution advocacy.

Damn right it should.

These eight incredible Canadian Women, Elle Canada exclaims, then promptly goes on to reveal that #1 and #3 are men (while #2 sports a tight bandage over her hair and neck because Islam is such a women-friendly religion).

Quadruple threat Vivek Shraya is all the things: musician, writer, actor and artist. Last year, she debuted her Canadian Screen Award-winning CBC web series, How to Fail as a Popstar, which is based on her own adventures growing up in Canada and trying to make it big and become the world’s first trans, brown Madonna. Shraya is also the founder of the award-winning imprint VS. Books, which offers publishing opportunities to emerging BIPOC writers. Meanwhile, her last book, 2022’s People Change, was included on CBC Books’ list of 26 Canadian Books to Read for Pride Month.

Yay he’s trans and brown, so Elle Canada gets two prizes for incloosivitee.

No one walks the talk more than Ontario member of provincial parliament Sarah Jama. Since the conflict in Gaza began in October 2023, she has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and spoken in defence of the Palestinian people. After a kaffiyeh ban was introduced in the Ontario legislature in April, Jama continued to wear hers anyway—again and again, even after being removed.

Ah yes “the conflict in Gaza began in October 2023” – when Hamas slaughtered a bunch of people at a music festival. That “conflict.”

Few log as many overtime hours as Fae Johnstone, executive director of Wisdom2Action, an LGBTQIA2S+ consulting firm that facilitates the improvement of LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion for non-profits, government agencies and other organizations. The Ottawa native, who is also the executive director of the Society of Queer Momentum, has worked long and hard advocating for more rights and social support for the queer community, particularly amid resurgent homophobia, transphobia and misogyny.

Fae Johnstone is misogyny.

Elle Canada is a sour joke.

It’s almost as if this controversy isn’t medical at all but purely political.

‘Witch-hunt’: BMA tries to identify who leaked planned opposition to Cass review

The British Medical Association (BMA) has been accused of undertaking a “witch-hunt” to try to identify which senior figure leaked that it was set to oppose the landmark Cass review on transgender healthcare.

It has warned its ruling council’s 69 members that whoever tipped off the media about its stance should own up or face their non-cooperation being seen as “an act of dishonesty”. Critics said its action is “disgraceful”, “Orwellian” and “witch-hunt-like”.

In other words not medical, not technical, not about evidence or argument, but a matter of loyalty and commitment. Politics rather than epistemology.

The BMA has been heavily criticised by key medical figures since it voted on 17 July to in effect reject Dr Hilary Cass’s report. It is the only medical organisation in the UK to not accept and find fault with her findings, which were accepted by the last government and its Labour successor.

It’s the Guardian saying all this. Something has shifted. No doubt the Cass report itself helped that shift.

The union has been in turmoil ever since. Its dismissal of the report as “unsubstantiated” has led to a serious split, resignations and huge tension within the body that represents about 195,000 doctors – a large majority of the UK medical profession.

As it should. The dismissal is outrageous – political instead of medical.

Dr Clare Gerada, an ex-BMA council member and ex-chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “I think the BMA are blaming the messenger, not themselves.” She questioned why it had adopted such a controversial position on such a sensitive subject without asking members for their views first. She is among an array of leading doctors who have signed a letter voicing serious concern at the BMA’s stance.

The edifice is tilting.

Not vulgar enough yet? He can do more!

Donald Trump has reposted a crudely misogynistic comment about Kamala Harris on Truth Social in a move that reprised his past record of sexist behaviour and brazenly flouted pleas from members of his own party to emphasize issues over personal attacks.

With fresh polls showing Harris further improving her standing – and widening the gap with her opponent among women voters – Trump drew online opprobrium by sharing a vulgar post on his social media site implying that the Democratic nominee owed her political rise to sexual favours.

Trump is a rapist, and proud of it, while he tries to pretend to believe that Harris is that other thing. Your basic good old boy has done his share of raping because if he hadn’t he would be a pussy, i.e. a woman ew gross. Men can’t do any wrong and women can’t do anything right. Heads they win tails we lose.

The post – originally posted by another user – featured photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton alongside the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

…

The Harris campaign made no immediate response to Trump’s latest burst of social media activity, which followed disclosures of an altercation between his campaign team and staff at Arlington national cemetery, the resting place of fallen US military heroes, during a visit on Monday.

However, the CNN host Anderson Cooper – in a lengthy segment – said the posts took Trump’s previous campaigning to a “whole other level”.

“This is the Republican candidate for president and the 45th president of the United States, talking about two women who, no matter what you think of their politics, are two of the most accomplished women in American political history,” Cooper said.

Whatever. Women are all filthy whores who won’t have sex with us. They must never get their filthy hands on any kind of power.

Photographic confirmation – Trump grinning and poking his thumb up at Arlington National Cemetery.

Oh COME on.

Really? Really? Because Islam famously stands for women’s rights and women’s visibility and women’s non-erasure?

On what PLANET you woman-hating goon?

Is it goodbye Don at last?

Democrat Kamala Harris has surged ahead of Republican Donald Trump, 48%-43%, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found.

The findings reflect an eight-point turnaround in the presidential race from late June, when Trump had led President Joe Biden in the survey by nearly four points.

…

“I think people are cautiously optimistic that they’re going to have a lot better chance with Harris than they would have had with Biden going head-to-head with Trump,” said Amy Hendrix, 46, of Fort Worth. An independent who usually votes Democratic, she was among those called in the poll. “I’m very excited to vote for a woman, and that’s just the truth.”

I’m excited to smack Trump in the face again.

The Army slaps Trump upside the head.

The US Army issued a stark rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the incident on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, saying in a statement on Thursday that participants in the ceremony “were made aware of federal laws” regarding political activity at the cemetery, and “abruptly pushed aside” an employee of the cemetery.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said in the statement on Thursday.

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve,” the statement said.

So there, Bonespurs.

The obligatory insult:

Aw, gee, look how enlightened and sensitive and generous the man is when he explains why husbands have to beat their wives. It’s interesting, though, that he doesn’t also explain why wives have to beat their husbands, or even say they do have to beat their husbands. Apparently it’s just men who get to do the beating and women who get to be beaten.

The purpose of the beating, he says earnestly, is to warn the wife that the family is in danger. He doesn’t explain why that can’t be done just by saying it, or how he knows the family is in danger, or in danger from what. Also that the marital relations are in danger, he goes on. It’s odd that he thinks beating her will remove the danger. We secular weirdos think that marital relations should be based on affection, not beating. Beating doesn’t promote affection.

The beating is to tell her to be cautious.

Well, yes, the way fire burning is to tell you to be cautious. The beating might tell her to get the hell out of there if she can.

The beating should be symbolic, he says.

Symbolic of what, dude? The fact that you are always right and she is always wrong? What if that’s not the case? Eh? What if she’s right and you’re wrong? What if you have irreconcilable differences and there is no right or wrong, there’s only disagreement? Where do you get off assuming you’re always right and she’s always wrong?

We know where, of course. The Prophet Station.

Any port in a storm:

Today, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review (the flagship conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), published an article claiming that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election “on character.”

No, really. But bear with me; the headline wasn’t quite accurate.

Trump could beat Kamala Harris, Lowry wrote, not by running on his character but by attacking hers. According to Lowry, you see, one of Trump’s “talents as a communicator is sheer repetition, which, when he’s on to something that works, attains a certain power.”

That’s not a talent though. It may work, but that doesn’t make it a talent. There’s no skill to it. More the opposite – sheer repetition is what you do when you have nothing else, and Trump always has nothing else.

Thus, he argued, Trump could hammer Harris into the ground if he called her “weak” enough times—50 times a day ought to do it, according to Lowry—and especially if he gave her a funny nickname, like the ones he managed to stick on “Crooked Hillary” Clinton and “Little Marco” Rubio.

That might be true, but if it is it’s because people are stupid or greedy or both, not because Trump’s 3 tricks endlessly repeated equal talent.

Lowry and others in that group never became full-fledged MAGA warriors. Many of them hated Trump, as Tucker Carlson, now a born-again Trump booster, admitted in 2021; they just hated Democrats more. But they also hated being reminded of the spirit-crushing bargain they’d made with a tacky outer-borough real-estate developer they wouldn’t have spoken with a year earlier. As Charlie Sykes wrote in 2017, they adopted a new fetish: “Loathing those who loathe the president. Rabid anti-anti-Trumpism.”

Which is tricky, because reasons not to loathe Trump are shatteringly difficult to find. He’s not one of the lovable bad guy types – he’s too boring for that, too dumb, too trashy, too clumsy (those damn hands!), too dim, too painful to listen to.

Stepping outside of years of partisan tribal affiliations comes with professional and social costs (and for politicians, electoral consequences). But principles are sometimes burdensome things; that’s part of what makes them principles. The behavior of the anti-anti-Trumpers continues to be an inexcusable betrayal of the values they once claimed to hold. Many of them spoke, even passionately, against Trump—and then they shuffled into line. And for what? One more federal judge? A few billion more dollars in the account of a donor?

Winning. Winning for the sake of winning. That’s my guess.