Trump was in Davos today, pretending to be a grownup again. “Don’t worry about climate change,” he said, on the basis of nothing.

“This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process because this is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action,” Trump said in his opening address at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Did they let him write it himself? That’s gibberish, and childish.

“But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” he continued. “They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers. And I have them, and you have them, and we all have them. And they want to see us do badly, but we don’t let that happen.”

We can see exactly where he went off script. I have them, you have them, he has them, they have them, you have them, we have them, I have them. It’s galling that someone this mentally vacant is in a position to give these “speeches.”

“These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives. We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty.”

Oh shut up. Climate change has nothing to do with “socialism” and vice versa.

The president also claimed that the U.S. is among the countries with “the cleanest air and drinking water on Earth”

Again – not the issue.

Trump’s remarks came shortly before a session titled “Averting a Climate Apocalypse” featuring teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, with whom Trump has publicly feuded.

No; whom Trump has repeatedly publicly maligned.

Fielding reporters’ questions after his speech, Trump said he thought it “was very well-received” and insisted that he is a “very big believer in the environment.”

“We, right now, are doing extremely well in the United States,” he said. “But what I want is the cleanest water, the cleanest air. And that’s what we’re going to have, and that’s what we have right now.”

The Guardian reports:

The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.

It was a video file from MBS’s account sent to Bezos.

Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used.

I’m sure it was all perfectly innocent and benign.

The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how US tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos’s private life – including text messages – nine months later.

It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 – five months after the alleged “hack” of the newspaper’s owner.

…

Saudi experts – dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the crown prince and his inner circle.

So, very naturally, he stole Bezos’s data and murdered Khashoggi. Just another day in the life.

Oh ACLU. You are so fucked up.

Nobody is trying to “keep trans youth out of sports.” The issue is BOYS who identify as trans competing against girls. Boys should compete with other boys whether they identify as trans or not. That’s the issue, as of course you know.

And women who say that – the way I just did – are “actually” fighting for women’s rights in sport, while you are trying to sabotage them.

Nobody is “cast out of the category of ‘woman'”; men are not in the category of “woman” in the first place.

You don’t get to tell women that we have to pretend that some men are women because they say they are. You don’t get to force us to deny what we know, you don’t get to force us to step aside, you don’t get to force us to shut up, you don’t get to tell us we’ve been displaced by the new and more exciting version of women that is performed by men.

What’s the source of that dopy statement? I found this one from last August in the Raleigh [North Carolina] News and Observer:

Advocates of transgender rights reject concerns about bathrooms and locker rooms.

“Instead, we recognize the harm to all women and girls that will flow from allowing some women and girls to be denied opportunities to participate and cast out of the category of ‘woman’ for failing to meet standards driven by stereotypes and fear,” they said in a statement

But…we were told it came from “groups that actually fight for women’s rights in sports.” That sounds like, you know, feminist groups. But the groups turn out to be those that advocate for transgender rights – which is not the same thing at all. In fact as we see from this very story, they can be in tension with women’s rights. So, in short, the ACLU flat-out lied in this particular tweet.

Originally a comment by Sastra on A T shirt that could cause trouble or offence.

When psychologically fragile people are encouraged to believe they have no control over their emotions and no capacity to become mentally confident and self-sufficient — and society is told that these fragile people are completely and utterly dependent on outside validation in order for them to function or indeed even continue to live — we end up with self-appointed Saviors. Someone has to step in to protect the vulnerable.

We then go from a Culture of Respect, in which self-worth is inherent and restraint and resilience are held up as ideals, to an Honor Culture mentality, in which worth is socially determined. The ability to revenge yourself against those who dishonor you is now the currency of status. If the first one could be said to have the motto “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words could never hurt me,” then the second one is a combination of “Them’s fightin’ words” and “I don’t get mad; I get even.”

It’s the only way I can make sense of a gay man bashing a gay woman for wearing a pro-gay t-shirt, and celebrating violence against her. He’s a Savior fighting for the honor of those whose sense of worth is external, for they have Been Offended, and in an Honor Culture there is no other recourse than swift, harsh retaliation.

The new gay-basher, so like the old gay-basher.

Huh. Man approves of a bar that throws a woman out into the January night without her jacket and keys because she is wearing a pro-lesbians and gays T shirt. I guess Man is a Christian fanatic, or maybe a some other religion fanatic? Or just a secular fanatic? But anyway someone who hates lesbians and gays and is happy to see them persecuted and ostracized.

Mind you he would probably tell us he has no objection to lesbians and gays he just doesn’t approve when they shove it in our noses, when they be lesbian and gay in public, when they flaunt their pervy slogans in our restaurants and bars.

But but wait, no, that can’t be it – his profile says he’s gay himself.

Scottish comedian, former journalist, ranter, moaner, gay, HIV positive – undetectable.

And yet he thinks LesbianGayBisexualAlliance is such an evil label that it justifies throwing a woman out of a gay bar?

We live in a confusing world.

Does it make sense to call it a “peaceful protest” – let alone “incredibly” peaceful – when many or most of the people protesting are conspicuously carrying guns?

No, it doesn’t. A large gathering of men carrying assault rifles is a threat, a visible calculated threat, aka terrorism.

Threats are not “peaceful” and guns are not not-threats.

More from the Hooray For Guns rally.

Brilliant.

Just imagine if they were not white men.

Aw, swell, just what we need.

Caitlyn Jenner is using her voice to speak out for transgender rights.

The activist and former Olympian, 70, took the stage at the Women’s March in Los Angeles on Saturday and declared her desire to change the direction the country is taking.

Oh, at the Women’s March. A man who won medals at the Olympics and killed a woman with his car “took the stage” at the Women’s March, because anything for women is always improved by having a man take over. Always.

Dressed in a white blazer, lavender skirt and heels, Jenner shared her delight to be attending her very first Women’s March.

If you report on a woman you have to say what she’s wearing. It’s only courteous.

“Together as women, trans women and cis[gender] women, we have the power to influence our communities, our families, our friends and colleagues, and turn this country around!” she told the crowd, Deadline reported.

No. He’s not a woman and we’re not “together as women” with him. By all means help turn the country around, but get out of women’s spaces and marches.

Though she supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Jenner has since said she was wrong to advocate for him, based on his treatment of transgender people.

Yeah never mind everyone else.

Jenner is an asshole, and calling himself a woman doesn’t make him one tiny bit less so.

No, really? That’s not fake?

It’s not fake; I found them.

Male

and

Female

On the one hand, the sex that produces spermatazoa, and on the other hand

The traditional definition of female was “an individual of the sex that bears young” or “that produces ova or eggs”. However, things are not so simple today. Female can be defined by physical appearance, by chromosome constitution (see Female chromosome complement), or by gender identification. Female chromosome complement: The large majority of females have a 46, XX chromosome complement (46 chromosomes including two X chromosomes). A minority of females have other chromosome constitutions such as 45,X (45 chromosomes including only one X chromosome) and 47,XXX (47 chromosomes including three X chromosomes).

Female can be defined by physical appearance or gender identification. Male? Oh that’s a whole other story.

Some people were chatting about the LGB Alliance.

But what does that mean, “exclusionary”?

All groups “exclude” some people, necessarily, because if they don’t they’re just “everybody.” They may be open to all who want to join, but they still “exclude” those who don’t want to join.

This is ok. It’s allowed. It’s not automatically evil. Of course there can be exclusion for bad reasons, but exclusion by itself is neutral.

The LGB umbrella has been expanding by adding letters for years, so much so that it’s an easy joke, but there are in fact substantive reasons to ask if the expansion really makes sense. The reality is that being trans is not the same thing as being same-sex attracted, and in some ways the two conflict. Cotton ceiling, anyone? Lesbians don’t necessarily want to have sex with men who identify as women, and they don’t much want to be bullied for that preference, either.

It’s not obvious that it’s evil or phobic or “exclusionary” in the pejorative sense for LGB people to want a group for just them and not also trans people.

But never mind all that, just keep repeating “exclusionary” until the rocks melt into the sea.

And there’s the trendy angle.

What I don’t get about this, and probably never will, is why it’s trendy. What’s so trendy about it? What’s the outcome? Lesbians become…straight men? I’m not seeing the trendy.

Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather have more lesbians than more straight men. There’s no great shortage of straight men in the world, so what’s the burning need to make more of them by magicking lesbians?

Call me old-fashioned and boomer and TERF and all the rest of it, but I still think lesbians and gays (and feminists) do far more to uproot and disrupt and sabotage the rules and restrictions of gender than The Magic Gender Party on its best day.

This happened last night:

If we’re thinking that lesbians and gays and bisexuals should be able to have alliances and groups for lesbians and gays and bisexuals, Owen Jones is here to tell us we’re wrong to think that.

But why does “the LGBTQ movement” have to be that and only that? Why is it some kind of law of the universe that all those items belong together, and not just together but always together, and not just always together but always together on pain of expulsion from bars and chastisement from Owen Jones?

Here’s the thing: T is not the same as L and G. In some ways it’s in sharp tension with L and G, just as in some ways it’s in sharp tension with feminism.

But Owen Jones knows better; Owen Jones knows that’s just hate speech.

Hmm. Smells like projection.