Trump has a new chief of staff: Tea Party birther Mark Meadows.

With his choice, Trump tapped a lawmaker who was first elected in the post-Tea Party wave of 2012 and served as chairman of the Freedom Caucus. Meadows has been a key Trump ally since 2016 and the two reportedly talk frequently. During the impeachment battle, Trump and Meadows, who was instrumental in designing the president’s defense, talked several times a day.

Meadows also shares something else with the president, a past questioning of former President Barack Obama’s nationality. While campaigning in 2012, Meadows was asked if he would pursue an investigation to find out if Obama really is a citizen. “Yes,” Meadows responded. “If we do our job from a grassroots standpoint, we won’t have to worry about it. We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is.”

Here’s the bit where he starts babbling about his uncle and about him him him him him. He’s there to talk about a disease outbreak and instead he talks about his alternative career.

Also…that collar.

Pink News tells more lies about non-compliant feminists:

More than 200 feminists have written to British newspaper The Guardian rejecting the argument that transgender rights are a threat to women.

The letter was organised in response to Monday’s column by The Guardian writer Suzanne Moore: “Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced.”

But of course Suzanne Moore didn’t say “transgender rights are a threat to women.” Here’s what she did say:

Female oppression is innately connected to our ability to reproduce. Women have made progress by talking about biology, menstruation, childbirth and menopause. We won’t now have our bodies or voices written out of the script. The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with.

That’s not saying “transgender rights are a threat to women”; it’s saying that some versions of trans ideology redescribe women – actual women, not trans women – in a way that puts our rights in jeopardy. Trans ideology is not the same thing as trans rights. No feminist wants to take any rights away from trans people – real rights, that is, not invented rights like the right to be called the sex you are not or the right to get feminist women excluded from public life.

Nim Ralph, a community activist who signed the pro-trans letter, said: “The Guardian keep giving space to these ‘thought’ pieces amplifying a small subsection of the feminist movement who want to pit trans people against cis women, as an outside ‘other’ subhuman category.

Big fat damaging lie right there. No feminist is calling trans people subhuman.

More on Trump’s ridiculous outing to the CDC. (Why did he wear his play clothes to the CDC? His play clothes are for throwing paper towels at people who survived a hurricane, not for visiting a government institution. Nobody else there was in play clothes.)

Trump, wearing his “Keep America Great” campaign hat while discussing the global worry, tried once more to quell growing alarm about the spread of the virus in America. But he quickly ventured into side matters and political squabbles.

Because he has the attention span of a flea.

The president touted the accuracy of the test to detect the coronavirus, which members of his administration have acknowledged is not available to all who wants it, declaring it was “perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”

Ah yes, that’s appropriate, bringing up his criminal behavior toward Ukraine while pretending to do something about a disease outbreak.

Despite calling this week for bipartisanship during the crisis, he said he told Vice President Mike Pence not to be complimentary during his Thursday meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, where more than a dozen people have died, because “he is a snake.”

“Let me just tell you we have a lot of problems with the governor and, that’s where you have many of your problems, OK?” Trump said. “So Mike may be happy with him but I’m not, OK?”

This is not a 5-year-old in a tantrum, this is a 73-year-old who is supposed to be a president of the US dealing with a crisis.

Trump also said he talked on the phone with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about the 3,500 people stuck on a cruise ship anchored off the coast of California. Trump, at the CDC, advocated for the passengers to remain on the ship — in part so they would not count against the total number of victims in the United States.

Well it’s the numbers, you see, that’s what counts. Numbers of electoral college votes, numbers of people attending his inauguration, number of pounds he weighs, number of inches he is tall, numbers of coronavirus cases. If they’re on a ship THEY DON’T COUNT. Yay him.

The president, while touring the CDC, also boasted about his ability to understand the virus, even though he has repeatedly misstated how long it would take for a vaccine to be developed and available.

“You know my Uncle was a great — he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for a record number of years. He was a great super genius, Dr. John Trump,” the president said. “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. … Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Oh god oh god oh god

Oh did he.

Actually it was even worse than that. He spent a minute and a half explaining how much he hates Inslee, announcing that “he’s not a good governor by the way,” and inventing scenarios in which Inslee would do the wrong thing. It’s a disgusting contemptible sick-making display. The Tacoma News Tribune has video of the whole 80 minutes.

No really that’s ok we can do this ourselves, we don’t need help. Really. We’re doing it. Your help is not needed or requested. Dude, seriously, back off.

Every woman is a woman, yes, thank you for the tautology. That doesn’t mean that every (or any) man who calls himself a woman is a woman, and in fact, it’s not the case that every (or any) man who calls himself a woman is a woman. Every woman is a woman, and only women are women.

That’s about it really. It’s not complicated.

And Bozo is doing what they told him to do.

Trump just reiterated his lack of worry about the spread of the novel illness in the US. Perhaps problematic, though is that, to many, he’s coming across as casually dismissive and posturing, not measured, and reassuringly presidential.

“You have to be calm,” he said, at the White House this morning before departing to tour the tornado damage in Tennessee and just after signing an $8.3 billion emergency spending bill to deal with the virus.

And the best way to be calm is to have the government hide the truth from you. Better calm and dead than agitated and alive, right?

“It will go away,” he said. “We have very low numbers [of confirmed cases] compared to many countries throughout the world, our numbers are lower than almost anyone…deaths, is it 11?” It is.

It was. Now it’s 14. Also…we have low numbers now, because contagion doesn’t go from zero to a billion in one day. Other countries have more because that’s where it started, not because The God of Epidemics and Stock Markets made it so.

“This came unexpectedly, it came out of China, we closed it down, we stopped it, it was a very early shut down,” he added.

Sure, just wave your tiny hands and say we shut it down, that’s all it takes.

Ok they’re not looking out for our health and safety but at least they are doing everything they can to protect profits.

Another developing nightmare for the White House is growing fears that the travel industry — an important driver of the economy — could face a catastrophic blow as conferences are canceled and families mull whether to hold off on vacation plans.

After United Airlines announced cuts to capacity on domestic and international flights, the CEO of Southwest Airlines warned the domestic carrier may soon make the “gut punch” decision to cut flights owing to a falloff in bookings that started last week.

Trump met airline executives at the White House on Wednesday and they asked him not to publicly discourage Americans from taking planes since their business were at risk, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN’s Kevin Liptak.

Oh did they. Did they really. That’s fascinating because planes are known to be disease vectors like almost nothing else. The airlines don’t bring in new air during flights because it costs more, so they circulate the same stale re-breathed virus-laden air for the whole two or five or twelve hours of the flight. But hey, never mind that there’s a building epidemic, the important thing is the CEOs’ paychecks. These shitheads sat in Trump’s office and asked him not to issue appropriate health warnings but to shut up about it instead for the sake of their bank accounts.

Is that ruthless enough?

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Women deserve better:

The more I read this line, the more it bugs me.

Feminism is nothing without women of colour, migrant, disabled, queer, trans, Black and sex working women.

Feminism has included racists, xenophobes, eugenicists, homophobes etc… throughout its history.

And their bigotries did not render their calls for an end to gender inequality null, any more that MLK Jnr’s homophobia rendered his calls for racial equality null.

If you eliminated racism, xenophobia, homophobia etc… feminism would still have its place in fighting sexism.

To proclaim that feminism or any other social justice activism is “nothing without…” is an all or nothing fallacy that inherently demands a higher standard of behaviour from allies than you would demand from enemies.

You cannot solve every problem all at once, you can make progress by breaking problems up into manageable chunks. Pushing the feminist movement into being the everything movement inherently devalues feminism by removing its core idea from the discussion, and removing its focus.

And that is not to say that feminism is better without the listed groups, or that the various groups are wrong to organise or demand recognition from the feminist movement, but to point out that the core idea of gender equality is a thing in and of itself that can provide common ground to people of otherwise very different ideologies.

These people can work together within the context of feminism even if they don’t like each other very much outside of that context. This is how movements win, not by achieving a broad based intersectional agreement on all points, but agreement on a few points that allow majorities to develop behind them, allowing progress on those points.

By requiring agreement on all points, intersectionality minimises support for all points, thus slowing and even reversing progress on any given point.

Whoopsie! Big surprise for Mister Barr.

A federal judge Thursday criticized Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the Mueller report when it was released last spring, saying Barr’s early description of the report didn’t match the special counsel’s actual conclusions.

This is a Republican judge, appointed by Bush.

Judge Reggie Walton asked if Barr’s actions were a “calculated attempt” to help President Donald Trump and opined the attorney general had a “lack of candor” with the public and Congress.

“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote on Thursday. Barr’s initial publicly announced interpretation of the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller “cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”

…

Walton said he will review the full Mueller report himself to make sure the Justice Department didn’t over-redact it for public release.

What are the odds? You think he’ll find it just fine and dandy? I don’t.

Walton’s decision effectively puts the Mueller report — which has never been released to the public in its entirety — in the hands of the court under seal. Walton said he will review it confidentially. He could potentially then order the Justice Department to make more of the report available, under the Freedom of Information public records access law.

Let’s hope so.

Trump made some “remarks” yesterday at a coronavirus briefing with airline bosses, which the White House duly transcribed for us.

In a certain way, you could say that the borders are automatically shut down, without having to say “shut down.”  I mean, they’re, to a certain extent, automatically shut down. 

Impressive, isn’t it? We’re in good hands. But then he gets to the important part.

But it’s affecting the airline business, as it would.  And a lot of people are staying in our country, and they’re shopping and using our hotels in this country.  So, from that standpoint, I think, probably, there’s a positive impact.  But there’s also an impact on overseas travel, which will be fairly substantial.

That’s the important thing – people are stuck in the US because of a disease outbreak, so they’re forced to spend more time in OUR HOTELS, thus causing more money to go into the pockets of people who OWN HOTELS, which is pretty much the most important consideration on the planet. Yay disease outbreak, more $$$$$$$$ for Donnie!

Then he hands it over to Pence, who mostly says how awesome Trump is and how everything good was his idea.

So, Mr. President, as you said, it is a whole-of-government approach, but in a very real sense, it’s a whole-of-America approach.  And I’ve already expressed, and I know you feel a great deal of gratitude to our partners in industry and in the airline industry for acting on your priority to put the safety and health of the American people first.

THE PRESIDENT:  Good, Mike.  Thank you very much.  I just want to add, if I might — and to go a little bit further — the Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing.  And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion.  That was a decision we disagreed with.  I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made.  But we’ve undone that decision.

The Times reported on that last “remark” and said it’s a crock.

It was not entirely clear what he was referring to. Health experts and veterans of the government during Mr. Obama’s presidency said they were unaware of any policy or rule changes during the last administration that would have affected the way the Food and Drug Administration approved tests during the current crisis. Moreover, if there were, Mr. Trump did not explain why his administration did not change the rules during its first three years in office.

In other words he told a big ol’ lie.

Mr. Trump appeared intent on focusing attention on the Obama administration at a time when his own handling of the outbreak has come under intense criticism. He made a point of using the former president’s name in comments to reporters during a White House meeting with airline executives, called to discuss the economic effect of the virus.

Among other things, critics have pointed to the dismantling of a White House effort set up by Mr. Obama to respond to global health emergencies. The officials involved have left and not been replaced over the past two years, a point made by Obama administration veterans in recent days.

So obviously the thing to do is say some vague handwavey shit about “a decision on testing” and then use the word “detrimental,” which will surprise everyone so much they’ll forget to notice the handwaving.

Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, whose members had complained that the Food and Drug Administration took too long to approve their tests, said there were some discussions during the Obama administration about whether to tighten restrictions on laboratories that developed their own tests, but “nothing was ever put into place.”

She said the association, which represents state and local government labs, was not aware of any Obama-era rules that changed how the labs were regulated or how applications in a public health crisis were reviewed.

Yeah but Trump knows. He does. He has inside dope. He knows what NOBODY else knows, including anyone who was in the Obama administration.

Dr. Sharfstein said that the Trump administration hindered itself by giving first approval for a coronavirus test to the C.D.C., which meant that private labs could not conduct testing for clinical reasons without their own approval.

“They didn’t have to do it in the first place,” he said. “They’re reversing a decision that they themselves made.”

Oh so they’re correcting their own unnecessary rule about testing. And saying it was Obama’s. Well that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. Standard operating procedure.

This is horrifying. I mean really horrifying, as in you feel fear and horror.

Some replies:

• This sounds like medical malpractice. The patient is in clear physical discomfort. A responsible doctor would tell them to stop and let their body repair itself. Does the @gmcuk have a view on this?
• Would this “doctor” give an anorexic teenager tips on how to starve herself further? This is shocking.
• I’m not sure how to express what the current output from you make me feel, but I do know the overarching reaction is terror. What are you doing? Why are you promoting this? Please direct me to somewhere in your output where you tell young people there are alternatives, to pause
• I want this woman to know that butch lesbians are beautiful – to be celebrated and lifted up and that she can have the freedom to be one. Please stop mutilating vulnerable teens & kids!!

What’s all the fuss about an occasional rib “popping out”? And not being able to breathe or run, and constant pain, yes yes, but why all the fuss?

Dan Orr’s manifesto or campaign pledge or promo or whatever it is:

Women deserve better from our university. Sexual violence and harassment remain prevalent, and women are too often held back by misogyny and its intersections. As co-chair of Oxford SU’s Women’s campaign I helped bring women together to discuss feminism, establish support networks and campaign for change. From working with Irish activists in demonstrating and fundraising for the Repeal the Eighth campaign to tackling sexual violence on campus I learnt that the strength of the feminist movement is in its diversity and in the solidarity we have for each other. I want to bring the women at this university together to enact real lasting change. As a trans woman I have been lucky to work with and be supported by some deeply compassionate women activists and I want to extend the same support to women who are often excluded from certain types of feminism. Feminism is nothing without women of colour, migrant, disabled, queer, trans, Black and sex working women. As women’s officer I intend to focus on ensuring harassment is dealt with appropriately, sex working students receive support, student parents have a place to study and that we remain a pro-choice SU. Vote Dan Orr for women’s officer.

Women are “held back by misogyny and its intersections” – what are the intersections of misogyny?

Why was a man co-chair of Oxford SU’s Women’s campaign?

Why was a man needed to help “bring women together to discuss feminism, establish support networks and campaign for change”?

He learned “that the strength of the feminist movement is in its diversity and in the solidarity we have for each other,” by which he must mean its eagerness to include men in its feminism.

He wants “to bring the women at this university together to enact real lasting change” – like a shepherd guarding sheep.

I guess it’s the head-tilt that makes him a woman.

Another one.

A university students’ union is under fire for rebranding International Women’s Day to include trans women.

Leicester students’ renaming of the celebration as International Womxn’s Day follows their election of a trans woman to the post of women’s officer. Dan Orr will represent the views of women on campus, speaking out about sexism and misogyny.

Which he doesn’t understand from the inside, on account of how he’s a man.

A female student at Leicester University told The Times that she was “very upset” by the election but feared speaking out publicly in case she was disciplined by the university.

“I am sure Dan Orr will try her best, but she has not grown up with the same prejudices that face girls and women [and] the stereotypes they have had to deal with that are related to the female body. I know she will have had her own prejudices to deal with but they are not the same,” she said. The Leicester students’ union has an LGBT+ officer and a trans and non-binary officer.

So trans people get two officers and women get zero. Women are half the population but…

The university will call the day by its traditional name. However, in a newsletter to students, it said: “We use the term ‘womxn’ as a more inclusive spelling of ‘women’ that includes any person who identifies as a womxn.”

But that’s the wrong kind of inclusive. I don’t get to go to a refugee camp and “identify as” a refugee and take up some of the scant resources there. Nobody does. Include me out.

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, said: “Concepts aren’t ‘umbrellas’ or ‘shelters’ for whoever wants to come in — that’s not what concepts do. They’re cognitive tools,” adding that Ms Orr’s election was “a backwards step”.

Off a cliff of stupid.

Last week:

Two of Scotland’s best known libraries are under attack for their conflicting stance on trans rights as the “culture wars” escalate in the country’s arts scene.

Feminists have railed against the Glasgow Women’s Library after a women’s campaign group opposed to gender self-declaration law changes were denied access.

Their fury was inflamed by news that trans rights activists had been permitted to hold a training day at the publicly funded venue, led by two men.

In a statement online, the Glasgow Women’s Library said: “We will only accept venue hire bookings from organisations that align with our values and we always do our best to make sure of this when bookings are made.”

So the values of a Women’s Library are that men training other men (presumably on how to pretend to be women) are welcome but women pointing out that men are not women are not welcome. At a Women’s Library. Women get out, men come right in. At a Women’s Library.

But answer came there none.

This one is in an area where I’ve actually been, so that’s new.

An Amazon employee in Seattle has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to an internal message sent on Tuesday afternoon.

…

All other employees who came in close contact with the individual have been notified, according to the message. The employee worked out of the Brazil building, which is located blocks away from the Amazon Spheres, the company’s giant greenhouse domes in downtown Seattle. The company said it defined close contact as “closer than 6ft/2 meters over a prolonged period of time”.

The Brazil building is in South Lake Union, which has a pleasant park along Lake Union so I go there sometimes. Not that I’m thinking “Ooh I probably have it,” it’s just…interesting.

It’s a bizarre neighborhood. Not long ago it was a drab uninteresting area of low-slung industrial buildings and now it’s jam-packed with glittering new glass towers.

This concludes today’s episode of me me me me.

Another “conflict”:

A bitter conflict is escalating in the Scottish literary scene with the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) standing accused of “institutional transphobia” after it said that it would not support “bullying and calls for no-platforming of writers”.

But first we need to know what “transphobia” is, because people and institutions “stand accused” of it all too often not because they have shouted their hatred of trans people but because they have, for instance, said that women should not be persecuted for not ticking every box on the trans list of boxes to tick.

The issue was raised in the Scottish parliament on Tuesday, where the SNP’s Joan McAlpine said it was “worrying that women such as feminist poets in Scotland, Jenny Lindsay and Magi Gibson, have been subject to online mobs trying to stop them getting work or blocking their performances”.

The library stressed that it had spoken out to encourage freedom of expression. “We are a values-led organisation that embraces inclusivity, collaboration and a respect for pluralism – of languages, cultures and faiths … this does not mean that we are taking sides in any particular debate but we will not be passive if we are made aware of behaviours within our community that do not align with our values.”

The vagueness is a problem though. Vagueness is part of this whole mess. What is “transphobia”? Why is disagreement over definitions called a “phobia”? What is “gender identity”? Why are we being ordered to subscribe to a vague and woolly yet binding set of magical claims?

But in response, a group of trans and non-binary authors released an open letter that said the SPL’s position “may reflect serious institutional transphobia”, and had caused “extensive distress”.

See? More vague and woolly demands accompanied by passive-aggressive threats.

Reactions to SPL’s statement and the ongoing fallout have been varied. Scottish PEN said on Tuesday that it was disappointed, writing: “Free expression is complex and any policy that ignores such complexity can stifle the free expression of a range of stakeholders, most notably members of marginalised communities.”

But which “marginalised communities”? In what way are they marginalised? What about women – do we count as a marginalised community?

On Wednesday, more than 200 writers including author Lionel Shriver and comedian Graham Linehan put their names to an open letter of support for the “unequivocal stance” of the SPL: “From universities to arts organisations, libraries and government departments, the no-platforming and bullying of anyone holding views not actively endorsing extreme gender ideology is destroying our cultural life,” says the letter, although the SPL had [not] mentioned not gender. “Scotland has always been an example of progressiveness in arts, education and culture, and we are proud that the first stand against this aggressive chilling of intellectual debate and thought has been taken by Scotland’s national poetry library.”

I signed that letter too.

Warren is out, so we have to choose between Biden and Sanders to get the sack of shit out of office. I’m disgusted.

The sack of shit thinks his random thoughts are more authoritative than the informed thoughts of people with relevant education.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday night spun a web of theories minimizing the coronavirus’ threat to Americans, accusing the World Health Organization of dispensing inaccurate facts about the outbreak, and suggesting that those with the disease could be safe going to work.

During expansive remarks on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, the president continued to break with public health officials’ more dire messaging regarding the international crisis and forcefully contradicted the WHO, which earlier in the week pegged the global mortality rate for the coronavirus at 3.4 percent.

Donald Trump is not someone who should be “forcefully” correcting the WHO, because he can barely find his own ass in the dark.

“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor,” Trump said.

Hunch shmunch. His hunches are not relevant to anything, and he should keep them to himself. He’s a pig-ignorant real estate huckster, and he has nothing to tell us about COVID19.

“You never hear about those people. So you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and — or virus. So you just can’t do that,” he continued. “So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work but they get better.”

Look at him. He thinks the people telling us about the estimates don’t know that.

Oh please.

Academics? Why academics? That makes it sound as if it’s a technical term, and a product of expertise and research. It’s not. It’s a political label, and a very silly one. It puts a modifier on sex to make pretend-sex seem more legitimate and science-based and…you know…real. It puts it there to make it seem as if “trans woman” and “cis woman” are just two kinds of woman, when in fact the “trans” in “trans woman” literally means “not.” You can’t use “not woman” and “woman” to mean two kinds of woman. Trans women are men who

• identify as
• pretend to be
• want to be
• wish they were
• fantasize they are
• play at being
• imagine they are

women. There is no need for a pseudo-technical word to express not being that kind of woman but the other kind, the kind who just is a woman.

Furthermore, “cisgender” is of course not “used by academics worldwide to mean “not transgender” because most academics, like most people, don’t talk about the subject at all, and have no interest in it.

There is no need for a word to say “women who are not pretending to be women.” No need at all.