Mitch McConnell yesterday:

The entire nation is horrified by today’s senseless violence in El Paso. Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims of this terrible violence, their families and friends, and the brave first responders who charged into harm’s way.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just now:

The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, 5 months ago and the Senate has yet to vote on it. It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown. You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses. Care to explain the people why?

I did an angry reply to McConnell myself yesterday. It’s stomach-turning watching Trump and McConnell pretend to be sad about El Paso when they are the very people who glorify guns, scream bloody murder at all efforts to control the sale of guns, and talk racist incitement every chance they get. Nobody wants their damn prayers.

If NewsOne is right the El Paso mass murderer is a white supremacist Trump fan.

While officials did not immediately announce the identity of the shooter, the Washington Examiner reported that “A law enforcement source in El Paso told the Washington Examiner that 21-year-old suspect Patrick Crusius from Dallas, Texas, has been taken into custody.”

A manifesto purportedly written by Crusius, perhaps even in the hours before the shooting attack that according to one report left at least 15 people dead, was left behind. Pages of the manifesto included anti-immigrant rhetoric with the author going into depth on why he is “against race mixing,” supports the idea to “send them back” and offering a prediction of “genocide.”

Lie down with pigs, get up covered in pig shit.

Good to see he protected his hearing before killing at least 18 people at random.

Brilliant juxtaposition. So appropriate, so thoughtful, so sensitive.

Huh? What? What have women done wrong this time?

Diana Tourjée

@DianaTourjee

Dear cis women, Your boyfriend & your brother like trans girls. When you find that out, I hope you remember what happened to these men after women in their lives shamed & rejected them. The stories in this piece are devastating, & sickeningly normal.

“This piece” was written by none other than Diana Tourjée.

It’s the story of Owen, whose girlfriend got so mad at him when she found out he lusted after trans women.

He’d love to have a healthy, public relationship with a trans woman. But it feels unlikely. He doesn’t really know where to meet trans women, and if his next girlfriend is a cis woman, he expects to keep this secret from her. The trauma of being shamed by his ex has marked him with paranoia. If found out again, he’s afraid he’d be ostracized completely, “scarlet letter style.”

Poor sad Owen! Mean Owen’s cis ex, who shamed him.

Owen is one of countless men who are attracted to trans women but are too afraid to say so publicly. I’ve reported on this for years, but the coverage rarely draws these men out of hiding. In July, though, an interview I conducted with four straight guys inspired many such men to speak up, across the internet, onto countless social media timelines, and in emails to me. Their reasons for hiding may seem obvious, a blend of homophobia and a fear of being stripped of their masculinity.

Countless, eh? That’s a convenient number.

Anyway, the point is, everybody is doing everything wrong, except for trans women.

A philosopher tackles some weighty issues in the disagreements between gender critical philosophers and what she chooses to call “transfeminist” ones. (What does that even mean? Identifies as feminist but is actually a misogynist?) I haven’t finished reading it yet because one item demanded immediate attention.

What about the claim – elaborated most fully in Dr. Stock’s Quillette column – that trans-inclusive institutional policies can constrain professors’ freedom to teach?

I think the answer here is mixed. Certainly, no one should mispronoun a non-binary person simply because they (the speaker) have adopted the scholarly view that there are only two genders. But there is an easy workaround. If, for some reason, I refuse to say “they”, then when engaging with a student who uses that pronoun, I can simply use their name instead.

That “the scholarly view that there are only two genders [sexes]” is funny-irritating. Yes, it’s a mere “view” that there are two sexes and not eleventy billion. It’s a mere view but it’s a scholarly view, as is the view that there are eleventy billion. We’re all scholars here, doing our scholarly thing.

But that’s not what made me stop reading in order to post.

But imagine an instructor whose expertise is in issues related to prisons and incarceration. Now imagine that, as is the case with many British GCF philosophers, the instructor believes that trans women in women’s prisons pose an unacceptable threat to the safety of inmates in those prisons. (For the record, I deny this view.) Does academic freedom permit that instructor to discuss this issue in the classroom? I think that it does.

Now, that’s bad news for trans students in the class. I don’t say this lightly. A classroom in which such ideas are taught is an inhospitable learning environment for trans students, in a world that is already plenty inhospitable for them. Not all of the costs of academic freedom are borne by faculty themselves. Responsible colleagues therefore attune themselves to power differentials that render students vulnerable, and seek to cultivate supportive learning environments. But universities can’t force them to do this.

That’s a strange move she makes there. Inhospitable for trans students, power differential, vulnerable…but what about the women in prison? Why does the transfeminist philosopher ache with concern for trans students but not for women in prison? Isn’t it likely that women in prison are a whole hell of a lot more vulnerable and at the mercy of a power differential than university students who identify as trans? Isn’t it in fact a near certainty? Which would you rather be?

It’s pretty breathtaking to see an academic who clearly considers herself – identifies as – progressive and woke and concerned in the right ways, so blithely jump right over the fears of women in prison to focus on the inhospitable learning environment for trans students created by talking about those fears of women in prison. The writer – Shannon Dea – apparently didn’t even notice that’s what she was doing. Class privilege anyone? Educational privilege? Freedom privilege? Not being in prison privilege? Being in a classroom privilege?

This is one of the many reasons I refuse to board their train, and it’s a big one.

Robert Reich:

Greenland’s ice sheet lost 11 billion tons of surface ice in one day. July is on pace to become the hottest month ever recorded. Wildfires are raging across the Arctic.

We are already feeling the effects of the climate emergency. But Trump and Republicans in Congress refuse to even acknowledge the basic science of this crisis, much less take action to address it. The oil and gas industry donated almost $24 million to Republican candidates last election cycle — and they’re getting their money’s worth.

He was linking to CNN:

After months of record temperatures, scientists say Greenland’s ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean — equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools.

Granted we don’t know how many tons of surface ice Greenland normally loses on an August day.

This July alone, Greenland’s ice sheet lost 197 billion tons of ice — the equivalent of around 80 million Olympic swimming pools — according to Mottram. She told CNN the expected average would be between 60-70 billion tons at this time of year.

60-70 billion tons for the whole summer, for July, what?

Not clear, but it’s a lot, and it’s not a good trend. Meanwhile Trump is busy stirring up racists day in and day out.

Oh no – Native Americans are destroying our Western way of life, at least so says Liz Cheney.

On a momentous day for Tribal Nations, Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), the House Republican Conference Chairwoman, stated that the successful litigation by tribes and environmentalists to return the grizzly bear in Greater Yellowstone to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) “was not based on science or facts” but motivated by plaintiffs “intent on destroying our Western way of life.”

Our Western way of life? Whose Western way of life? White people’s? Republicans’? White Republicans’? Cheneys’? Because from what I remember – correct me if I’m wrong – white people did quite a lot to ruin Native Americans’ way of life back in the day, and something tells me Liz Cheney doesn’t feel a whole lot of compunction about that.

In other words it takes quite a lot of gall for pale Republicans to complain about Native Americans spoiling any way of life.

One of the largest tribal-plaintiff alliances in recent memory prevailed in the landmark case, Crow Tribe et al v. Zinke last September, when US District Judge Dana Christensen ruled in favor of the tribes and environmental groups after finding that the Trump Administration’s US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had failed to abide by the ESA and exceeded its authority in attempting to remove federal protections from the grizzly. Tuesday, USFWS officially returned federal protections to the grizzly.

…

“So, in striving to protect our culture, our religious and spiritual freedoms, our sovereignty and our treaty rights – all of which are encapsulated in the grizzly issue – we are ‘destroying’ Cheney’s idea of the ‘Western way of life’?” questioned [Tom] Rodgers. “I would remind the Congresswoman that at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition an estimated 100,000 grizzly bears roamed from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. That was all Indian Country. Now there are fewer than 2,000 grizzly bears and our people live in Third World conditions on meager reservations in the poorest counties in the US. Does she really want to talk about ‘destroying’ a ‘way of life’?” asked Rodgers.

Yes but you see her way of life matters and yours doesn’t.

That seems to be the new rule.

Also the president of the US takes to Twitter to mock Elijah Cummings for having an intruder break into his house.

“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

Trump’s tweet came less than 24 hours after a report from WJZ, the CBS affiliate in Baltimore, that Cummings’ home had been burglarized early Saturday morning, hours before Trump launched a Twitter attack on the congressman.

He had another fascist rally yesterday.

At a raucous rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday night, Trump continued to drag the city of Baltimore through the mud ― and extended his attacks to Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Trump claimed that Baltimore’s homicide rate was “significantly higher than El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,” then asked his audience for more suggestions to embellish the comparison.

At one point, before protesters interrupted his speech, Trump also suggested that Democrats were at fault for murders in Chicago. And he blamed Democrats for the violence that plagues various urban areas, saying they “squeezed the blood” out of those places.

And so on and so on. It’s an early-stage fascist regime. It will continue to get worse.

Updating to add: The article is from August 2016 so obviously the inspiration must be the other way around. H/t clamboy for noticing.

Yaniv has inspired imitators. Of course.

A transgender woman in Charlottetown has filed a complaint with the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission alleging she was refused service at a local salon because of her transgender status.

Kristen McKay says she went into Carrie’s Esthetic Salon in downtown Charlottetown on Tuesday afternoon to get her nails and makeup done and for makeup lessons.

Behold the transgender woman in question:

Krystalle Ramlakhan/CBC

McKay said a woman at the salon informed her that she didn’t do services for men, and when McKay replied that she’s not a man but a transgender woman, McKay was still refused service.

“I felt like I was a piece of garbage. I was worthless,” said McKay.

I don’t believe he felt anything of the kind. I think he felt happy about his chances for getting into the papers.

If you go to a supermarket and ask them to fix your car, you don’t get to complain of feeling worthless if they say they don’t provide that service.

In a written statement, salon owner Carrie MacFadyen said she would serve a transgender customer if she felt safe and secure in a room alone with them.

McKay said MacFadyen tried to give her an address for another salon to get her nails done, but McKay refused. She left, filed a complaint with P.E.I. Human Rights Commission and went to the media with her story.

Of course, because going to another salon wouldn’t be any fun, and wouldn’t give him the chance to play Civil Rights Hero Like John Lewis or Elizabeth Eckford.

“It is discrimination. I’m a human being. I have rights and people should know what people’s rights are and if you’re going to run a business you should know what rights are,” said McKay.

Nobody said he wasn’t a human being. He’s the one who should know what people’s rights are. This isn’t the Greensboro Woolworths lunch counter and he isn’t a black person denied a public service on racial grounds. He’s a stubbly white man who wants to make life unpleasant for women in the service industry.

Also, he’s been stalking the salon owner.

“It is unfortunate that the situation is being referred to as a transgender issue when the only issue is about my safety. I have absolutely no issues with transgender people and support their cause,” MacFadyen said in the statement.

It goes on to say that McKay is often standing or sitting on the street where MacFadyen parks her car and that — along with the fact that McKay then showed up at her work — made her uneasy.

Gee, I wonder why.

The dictator strikes again:

Navy officials said Wednesday they are pulling achievement medals from prosecutors who argued the case against a decorated Navy SEAL who was acquitted in the death of a wounded Islamic State captive after President Donald Trump intervened.

Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday that he had directed the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations to “immediately withdraw and rescind” the Navy Achievement Medal from prosecutors who argued the case against Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was acquitted by military jurors earlier this month. “The Prosecutors who lost the case against SEAL Eddie Gallagher (who I released from solitary confinement so he could fight his case properly), were ridiculously given a Navy Achievement Medal,” Trump complained, adding, “I am very happy for Eddie Gallagher and his family!”

And so it was done.

Navy spokesman Cdr. Jereal Dorsey said that on Wednesday, after Trump’s tweet, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer rescinded the awards. As secretary, he has that authority, Dorsey said.

The move appeared to be a highly unusual presidential intervention in a case Trump had personally championed and drew immediate condemnation. Former Pentagon spokesman David Lapan, a retired Marine colonel, said the move represented the “further politicization of our military” and was a “ludicrous” move “in the face of so many more important and pressing personnel issues.”

Dictators gotta dic.