A more animated time

Jun 8th, 2019 10:27 am | By

Remember that time Trump went to meet with Obama during the transition period? And came away raving about what a great guy he is and what rapport they had and how much Obama liked him? Now he’s doing it about the queen. He thinks the queen liked him.

Mind you, he hadn’t previously spent years insisting the queen was born in Kenya and shouldn’t even be the queen, so that commonality is missing. But the rest is unpleasantly reminiscent.

The US president, Donald Trump, has boasted about having “automatic chemistry” with the Queen during his state visit to the UK.

Trump, during an interview with Fox News, said people had noticed how well he and the Queen had connected.

He said: “The meeting with the Queen was incredible. I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times and we had automatic chemistry, you will understand that feeling. It’s a good feeling. But she’s a spectacular woman.”

He thinks she liked him. He thinks that wasn’t her trained skilled ceremonial politeness to any head of state she’s required to schmooze with, he thinks it’s personal. Dude, if it were personal you wouldn’t get any closer than Hoboken.

“There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time. We had a period we were talking solid straight, I didn’t even know who the other people at the table were, never spoke to them. We just had a great time together.”

Are there. Really. Are there really those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time? I’m gonna go with “no,” because what are the odds? Unless he just means that everyone in his retinue said that, in which case it’s literally true because they have never seen the queen have any kind of time, better or worse or indifferent, on account of how they don’t hang out with her. But if he means people who actually know the queen and see her having times, then no. They don’t say that.



The distress and hurt

Jun 7th, 2019 4:58 pm | By

This also happened today.

A crappy cowardly “statement” that marks out Julie Bindel (though without naming her) for special opprobrium a day and a half after a raging man attacked her after that very meeting. It’s interesting that he apologizes for causing people “distress and hurt” by listening to Julie but says not a word about any “distress and hurt” anyone might feel about the assault on Julie.



Return to Space in a BIG WAY

Jun 7th, 2019 4:31 pm | By

The Guardian solemnly parses Trump’s Fractured Astronomy:

Trump’s declaration shocked many space enthusiasts, because the moon has not traditionally been regarded as part of Mars.

The leading theory is that a collision between Earth and a planet-sized entity, many years ago, resulted in debris that eventually became the moon. On average Mars is 140m miles from the moon. Nasa did not immediately respond to a question from the Guardian asking if the moon is part of Mars.

Well it’s Friday afternoon. I’m sure they’ll get to it on Monday.

Irrespective of whether the moon is part of Mars (it isn’t), Trump’s announcement was doubly surprising given his previous enthusiasm for a moon trip. His criticism of Nasa for “talking about going to the moon” came just three weeks after Trump championed the idea of a lunar visit.

Why so he did!

Maybe he meant the other Moon?

[I]t soon emerged that Trump’s moon reversal may have been provoked by the Fox Business tv channel.​ One hour before the president offered his take on the moon’s origin and his criticism of Nasa, Fox guest Neil Cavuto had expressed scepticism over a moon trip.

Cavuto reportedly told the TV cable network that Nasa is “refocusing on the moon, the next sort of quest, if you will, but didn’t we do this moon thing quite a few decades ago?”

Well that’s the thing, though: if it’s on tv, it’s true. You can’t be sure it’s true if it’s just NASA telling you, or people like astronomers and engineers and Rocket Scientists. But if it’s Mister TV? Then you know.



Which part?

Jun 7th, 2019 12:14 pm | By

Well ok then. I did not know that.



Literal literal violence

Jun 7th, 2019 11:49 am | By

Please, tell us more about how terrified men are of women:

Two women say they were subjected to a homophobic attack and left covered in blood after refusing to kiss on a bus.

Melania Geymonat, 28, said the attack on her and her partner Chris happened on the top deck of a London night bus as they were travelling to Camden Town.

A group of young men began harassing them when they discovered the women were together, asking them to kiss while making sexual gestures.

Four male teenagers aged between 15 and 18 have been arrested.

They are being questioned on suspicion of robbery and aggravated grievous bodily harm.

How grievous? This grievous:

https://twitter.com/sophwilkinson/status/1137033059931500544

Ms Geymonat said: “They surrounded us and started saying really aggressive stuff, things about sexual positions, lesbians and claiming we could kiss so they could watch us.

“To ease the situation I tried to make some jokes, like Chris wasn’t understanding because she didn’t speak English.

“She even acted as if she was sick… but they started throwing coins. The next thing I know Chris is in the middle of the bus and they are punching her.

“So I immediately went there by impulse and tried to pull her out of there and they started punching me. I was really bleeding.”

Yes but cis privilege.



World upside down

Jun 7th, 2019 11:27 am | By

Guys who identify as women reeeeeeeeeeally need to stop saying this.

From the Telegraph:

Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female gender transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman. This week he tackles the controversial issue of transwomen using female-only toilets

You know how parents tell children who are scared by spiders, ‘It’s much more frightened of you than you are of it’? Well, the same thing applies to transwomen in female-only toilets. However frightened women may be by our presence, we are way, way more petrified by having to be there.

No.

No.

Men don’t get to say that.

First of all he doesn’t and can’t even know that.

Second there really is such a thing as men assaulting women in isolated places, including such places as female-only toilets.

Third look at yourself. If you have a male body then women have more to fear from you than you do from them. You don’t get to flip that around just because you have a fashionable idea that you “identify as” a woman. Identifying as a woman doesn’t give you the skeleton and musculature and lungs and heart of a woman.

Fourth look at the analogy. Children and spiders. Children really can squash spiders with one quick smack. The same is not true of women with regard to men. The analogy is fucking ridiculous and it just betrays how maddeningly narcissistically indifferent too many men are to the real risks that women have to deal with.

See also: this astounding comment at Daily Nous:

JT ·

What’s more, in making the empirical claim the GC crowd also never seems to want to acknowledge the very well documented violence that transwomen often face when forced to use men’s bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. The fact is that it is way more dangerous to be trans than it is to be a ciswoman. Conveniently, this inconvenient fact is never really acknowledge or discussed by the trans-exclusionary crowd.

Right. Ciswomen never face violence.



They merely relayed the facts

Jun 7th, 2019 10:18 am | By

Now Pink News feels misunderstood.

Mind you, three hours ago it was still all about the “nothing happened and she asked for it.”

But I guess the responses finally got through to them.

Alleged, we tell you, ALLEGED. By a trans person. Not by an enraged shouting man, but by a trans person. She said she was physically attacked but not physically harmed ohmygod how can this possibly be it must be an evil terfy plot.

It’s not needless to say at all. The emphasis, the word order, the vocabulary, all of it was shaped to convey hostile incredulity toward Julie’s account and sympathy for the angry shouting man who charged at her.

What a pack of cowardly liars.



They call it Prick News for a reason

Jun 7th, 2019 9:45 am | By

Damn, Pink News is horrible. It should just change its name to Trans News (which would be accurate in both senses).

That’s right, lead with the “misgendered” part, and also pretend not to believe the attack happened.

You can see it’s being ratioed, but Pink News won’t listen.

Let’s see how Lily Wakefield reports this story:

Radical feminist Julie Bindel claimed that she was “physically attacked” by a transgender woman after speaking at an event at Edinburgh University on Wednesday (June 5).

This is Pink News, yet Wakefield forgets to say that Julie is a lesbian. Too busy monstering her, it seems.

We get Julie’s tweet about the attack, and then

The person referred to is Cathy Brennan, a trans woman misgendered as “a man” by Bindel, who claims she “lost her s[hi]t” but that she did not touch Bindel. Bindel later told The Scotsman that she was “almost” punched.

This is what Pink News focuses on – not the raging aggression by a male-bodied person against a lesbian feminist but the lesbian feminist’s “misgendering” her attacker.

Even if you think trans women should generally be called women, referred to as “she,” validated as women, I would think that occasions when trans women rely on their male bodies and voices and aggression to intimidate women would be an exception. Because that’s what was going on here. This is what makes me so furious about male displays of “losing their shit” at women – it’s their lack of inhibition in summoning their physical advantages to make the woman feel fear. I’ve known so many men who should know better but do this anyway. Joe “Cathy” Brennan wasn’t performing femininity in this incident, he was performing male rage, and he was doing that in aid of terrorizing a woman who makes him angry by…the ironies are infinite…not believing he’s literally a woman. “CALL ME A WOMAN YOU FUCKING CUNT.” Er, no.

But Lily Wakefield writes for Pink News, so none of that makes it into the story. What does make it into the story is the opposition to the panel.

The event was a panel discussion on “women’s sex-based rights.” The event page for the panel states that they planned to discuss “future ways forward for women’s rights in a world of complex sex and gender relations.”

Staff and students at Edinburgh University protested against the talk taking place, branding it “transphobic,” amassing more than 1,300 signatures on a petition against the event, holding a silent protest outside and organising a rally for later in the evening.

“Our view is that there is misinformation, misunderstanding, and fear-mongering presenting cisgender women’s rights as being opposed to trans and non-binary people’s rights,” said the school of social and political science student and staff collective who created the petition.

“We affirm that trans women’s rights are women’s rights and that cis and trans women should be standing together to combat gender oppression.”

When do trans women ever do that though? Apart from the ones who get called “truscum” for their pains. Trans women of the Joe “Cathy” Brennan type have zero interest in standing with “cis” women, they’re far too busy threatening and monstering women they call TERFs.

The Edinburgh University staff Pride network also spoke out against the event, and every member of the network’s committee has now resigned, claiming that the university censored their opposition.

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of the network, told PinkNews: “Instead of supporting us, supporting our position, they chose to censor us, saying in future we had to ask permission before taking a stand on anything.”

He said of the silent protest: “Staff and students came together beforehand to give each other strength and to make placards and badges. The solidarity was a strong message of staff and students together, protesting an unbalanced, one-sided event.”

Subtext: Julie Bindel is on the Wrong Side and had it coming.

When asked to comment, Bindel declined to say whether she had filed a police report against Brennan but told PinkNews: “I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.”

Bindel subsequently claimed on Twitter that PinkNews was “more-or-less calling me a liar” after reaching [we reached] out to her for the purposes of journalistic fact-checking and to offer a right of reply.

The state of that: a journalist who can’t even keep her subjects and verbs straight. She has Julie reaching out to herself.

A couple of responses to the tweet linking the article.

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1137003907681570816



Speaking from the cemetery

Jun 6th, 2019 2:02 pm | By

And this is a good look too. This is a very good look. Really very very very good look – the vulgar mob boss squatting in sight of a field full of the graves of soldiers who died in the fight to defeat Nazism, and talking smack about the special counsel and the Speaker of the House. Very dignified, very impressive, very somber, very devoted to the public good. I don’t think.

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1136653145369526272



Look fabulous, this way for the gas

Jun 6th, 2019 1:56 pm | By

Ok here’s a thing.

Oh the puckish sense of humor of the security state.

Yes she does have the photo.



Why are we putting up with this?

Jun 6th, 2019 12:51 pm | By

The Evening Standard says Julie Bindel had it coming.

CONTROVERSIAL feminist writer Julie Bindel says she was “lunged” at last night by an activist who had to be restrained by security guards. Bindel, co-founder of Justice For Women, was leaving a panel event at Edinburgh University when she was approached by activist Cathy Brennan, a trans woman whom Bindel mis-identifies as a man. “He ran right at me, was inches away from me. His fists were raised and his face was twisted with hatred and anger,” Bindel told The Londoner this morning.

Note the care to monster her with the very first word, which luckily is in all caps.

Then note that they see fit to say she “mis-identifed” as a man this large man who felt large and male and confident enough to lunge at her.

Much misidentify.

https://twitter.com/FranFaeFife/status/1136415300788903936

The Standard again:

Brennan posted on Twitter last night that she “lost my sh*t at Julie Bindel. She filmed me. I’m safe”. Brennan also claimed “the truth of the matter is that I did not raise a fist. I attempted to push past security so I could speak…with a person who has caused great harm to trans people.” The panel, entitled “Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does (and should) the future hold?”, had already drawn anger last month after the Edinburgh University’s Students’ Association Liberation group accused the university of “stirring up transphobia” for hosting it.

The panel didn’t “draw” anger. Some students chose to get angry about it. Saying the panel “drew” anger shifts the responsibility.

H/t Josh



What to do about the cues

Jun 6th, 2019 12:30 pm | By

A further thought occurs to me, pondering this business of Justin Weinberg and his heightened (and in my view exaggerated) empathy for t philosopher (who claims to be a trans woman) along with his barely detectable empathy for women and other subordinated categories of people. Imagine being made to feel bad about yourself the way t philosopher is, he tells us. So I ponder what it is that makes t philosopher feel bad. According to tp it’s terfy women talking about sex and gender, but I was attempting to look behind that.

So I thought about the fact that academics have to stand up in front of groups of people, small groups or large or both, and lecture at them and/or discuss with them.

So, yes, I can see how that would be freighted for a trans person. (It’s freighted for others too though, of course. What is an academic supposed to look like? Oh, you know – corduroy jacket, beard, pipe, pallid skin.) One of the big hurdles for trans people is the voice, and academics have to use their voices a lot. In other words teaching is quite likely a very self-conscious activity for trans people, over and above the self-consciousness that can afflict anyone.

What would the ideal be? I guess that students and colleagues and everyone would just smoothly accept the trans teacher as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch.

But the difficulty there, it seems to me, is that people also and at the same time have to accept everyone else as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch. I’m thinking it’s not all that easy for human beings to do both of those things at once. We have to internalize a lot of cues to who is which sex starting in infancy, and we also have to learn to override all those cues in the case of a very few people.

Is that even possible? Can people internalize both sets of cues, that give opposite results, without ever getting confused or absent-minded?

If it’s not, the result is that the acceptance embrace etc of the trans person as her/his chosen gender is always a conscious overriding of lifelong cues…and the trans person knows this.

So…maybe, even if everyone agreed that trans people are the gender they say they are, end of story, trans people would still feel edgy and self-conscious about it, because they would know people were always having to override the cues.

I don’t know what to do with that thought. My ideal is a different one, in which trans people would be content to identify as her/his chosen gender and leave it at that, without any insistence on “validation” and the like from the rest of the world. I think that would go a long way to eliminate this “anguish” that Justin Weinberg talks about, because it would be so much easier on all parties. It would no longer matter all that much if students were thinking “not a man, a woman” or the reverse every minute of the class, because the trans academic would be at peace with knowing people can’t help seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.



Just imagine

Jun 6th, 2019 11:53 am | By

I saw this.

So I followed the link and skim-read Justin Weinberg’s “won’t somebody please think of the trans women” piece. I was not overwhelmed by the reasoning therein. I was annoyed by bêtises like the one Jane points out. There are lots of them. The whole thing is written from the assumption that on the one hand there are cis people, lolling about on fluffy pillows of privilege, and on the other there are trans people, battling oppression and exclusion of a kind that we cis people can’t even begin to imagine.

For instance, right at the beginning:

Understanding t philosopher

Remember t philosopher? That’s the one who wrote that Medium piece full of hyperbolic self-pity and zero awareness of anyone else’s experiences with exclusion and oppression.

Reader, what do you do when you are confronted with the anguish of another person? I hope it is at least this: you try to understand. Sometimes it may be easy to understand, but sometimes, owing to qualities of the person suffering, or the kind of person you are and experiences you’ve had, or the circumstances you’re in, it may not be easy. You may not identify with their suffering, you may be puzzled by its depth, you may be put out by its expression, you may think it involves mistakes—but before responding in ways that don’t take someone’s suffering as seriously as the person undergoing it, you should try to understand it.

See? There it is already – the bizarre assumption that all of us reading are immune from exclusion, prejudice, mockery, insult, abuse – from, in fact, any kind of anguish.

There is also the now-familiar credulity, and not just credulity but insistence that we must all be credulous too. It apparently doesn’t even cross his mind that the “anguish” might be pumped up for effect, might be a political ploy, might be part of a larger picture of hyperbolic anguish that is brandished at women as a way to make them stop talking.

He goes on.

Do you love philosophy? Do you feel at home in this work? Do you think you wouldn’t be as fulfilled if you had a different kind of career? Many readers of Daily Nous will answer “yes” to these questions. This means that many readers will know where t philosopher is starting from.

Now imagine that when you take part in activities other professional philosophers do, unlike most of those other professional philosophers, you are made to feel quite bad. Yes, some philosophers may feel bad because they don’t think their work meets their own standards, or because of criticism by others, or because of stress to get work done, but this is different. It’s not about your work; rather, you are being made to feel bad—really bad—because of a characteristic of yours such as your race, or gender, or sexuality, or ethnicity, etc. In fact, it is so horrible that it is interfering with your mental and emotional well-being. Further, it is so unlike what most of your colleagues experience that most of them don’t understand it, and so fail to take it seriously, or think less of you for complaining about it, which of course makes it even worse. And now, unlike most other philosophers, you have to choose between doing what you love and preserving a minimally decent level of mental and emotional health.

Yes, imagine that, except many women and people of color don’t need to “imagine”; they know what it’s like from experience.

It’s as Jane says. He really doesn’t have the first fucking clue.

Updating to add a comment on Justin Weinberg’s post:

Also, trans-exclusive feminists complaining about violent messages and images clearly are not experts in the history of feminism or are willfully ignorant of the use of violent images in the history of women’s liberation. Trans women using violent imagery to promote their own liberation is only within the same historical millieu of all their feminist foremothers. Whining about “abuse” etc is just obfuscatory bad faith sophistry on the part of the trans-exclusive and used to engender sympathy from a public that is less plugged in to the discourse.

I’m so glad I’m not plugged in to that discourse.



This is Cathy

Jun 6th, 2019 8:37 am | By

Some Twitter reactions.

https://twitter.com/RIPx3Nutmeg/status/1136518984705224704



He regrets he was unable to land a punch

Jun 6th, 2019 8:30 am | By

A hulking man physically attacked Julie Bindel last night.

Gina Davidson at The Scotsman (cool name for a paper – are women allowed to read it?) reports:

Julie Bindel, the keynote speaker at an Edinburgh University event which discussed the future of women’s sex-based rights, said she was verbally abused, “lunged at” and almost “punched in the face”, by a transwoman as she left the building.

She thanked university security staff for protecting her and said she was still considering whether to press charges.

Today Ms Bindel said: “I have been beaten up by men in the past but not for a long time, and I knew precisely what was coming when I saw the rage on his face, and I am just so sick of this.

“We had had a very positive meeting – I was speaking about male violence against women and never even mentioned transgender people – and when I came out this person was waiting.

“There had been a protest outside earlier, but that had gone so he was obviously waiting for me.

“He was shouting and ranting and raving, ‘you’re a f[ucking] c[unt], you’re a f[ucking] bitch, a f[ucking] Terf” and the rest of it. We were trying to walk to the cab to take us to the airport, and then he just lunged at me and almost punched me in the face, but a security guard pulled him away.

“I got my phone out to film him to get evidence and he went for me again. It took three security guys at the stage to deal with him.”

A male person. It doesn’t matter in this context how he “identifies”; he has a male body and he used it to intimidate and try to assault a woman. Tell us again how “deeply hurtful” it is when women say men are not women.

“I was with Professor Rosa Freedman and we got in the cab and left, but we were both very shaken by it. I haven’t decided yet what action to take.”

She added: “I think the lecturers and other staff who stoked the flames of this by calling women bigots and fascists and Nazis because we were holding an event to discuss women’s rights, should take responsibility for this.”

Goddam right.

After the attack, it was revealed on social media platform Twitter that her attacker was a transwoman called Cathy Brennan, who it has been reported has previously advocated violence against women.

Brennan tweeted last night: “Lost my shot [sh*t] at Bindel. She filmed me. I’m safe.” and went on to say the “truth of the matter is that I did not raise a fist. I attempted to push past security so I could speak face to face with a person who has caused great harm to trans people across this country.

“I had been reaching my phone to try and record JB when I realised she was filming me. My one regret about the encounter is that I was unable to do so.”

Today Brennan, a film critic who has written for The Skinny magazine and the British Film Institute, said that if the press wanted “to hear my side of the story they can offer me the chance to write a full opinion piece in my own words. Otherwise, I will not be discussing it personally with anyone I do not know.” Brennan has previously tweeted in support of violence against women who believe that changing the Gender Recognition Act to allow people to self-identify as any gender, rather than needing a medical diagnosis, would endanger women’s rights to safety, privacy and dignity by doing away with single-sex spaces. One tweet read: “Any trans allies at #PrideLondon right now need to step the f[uc]kup and take out the terf trash. Get in their faces. Make them afraid. Debate never works so f[uc]k them up”

In other words physically assault them.



Necessary and appropriate

Jun 5th, 2019 4:50 pm | By

In Japan high heels are mandatory for women.

Japan’s health and labour minister has defended workplaces that require women to wear high heels to work, arguing it is “necessary and appropriate” after a petition was filed against the practice.

Necessary and appropriate for what, exactly? Knowing who is which sex without having to raise one’s gaze from the floor?

The remark came when Takumi Nemoto was asked to comment on a petition by a group of women who want the government to ban workplaces from requiring female jobseekers and employees to wear high heels.

“It is socially accepted as something that falls within the realm of being occupationally necessary and appropriate,” Nemoto told a legislative committee on Wednesday.

Easy for him to say.

Campaigners say wearing high heels in Japan is near-obligatory when job hunting or working in many Japanese companies.

Some campaigners describe high heels as akin to modern-day foot-binding…

Which they are. They’re a mild form of it, but they do bind and deform the feet, and they also inhibit women’s ability to move. The streets around the World Trade Center were littered with the damn things after the towers collapsed.



Sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach

Jun 5th, 2019 4:18 pm | By

Oh dear god. At the end he just starts explaining what an election is and what will happen with Brexit and how excellent it will all be, as if anyone had asked him to explain all the things. He is so BIZARRE.

He also explains to Leo Varadkar what a border is and what kind of border there is between Northern Ireland and Ireland. The taoiseach makes a brief attempt to set him straight but Trump just plunges on, talking nonsense as if reading it from The Big Book of Nonsense.

Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon.

“I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border,” he said at a joint press conference. “I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here. But I hear it’s going to work out very well here.”

Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall, a keystone of Irish government policy.

“I think you do, I think you do,” Trump said. “The way it works now is good, you want to try and to keep it that way. I know that’s a big point of contention with respect to Brexit. I’m sure it’s going to work out very well. I know they’re focused very heavily on it.”

In other words Trump explained what Ireland wanted to Varadkar. He did. You can see him do it.

In London on Tuesday Trump met the Brexiter politicians Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, all of whom have played down the idea that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will be a problem after the UK leaves the EU.

Trump echoed their confidence in Shannon. “There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it’s going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The border will work out.”

The Irish government has mounted an intense, three-year diplomatic effort arguing the opposite, that Brexit threatens peace and prosperity on the island of Ireland.

Never mind that, Trump knows better.

The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, made an unexpected intervention on the eve of the visit by calling Trump’s policy on the climate emergency “regressive and pernicious”, a critique protesters will echo at rallies in Shannon and Dublin.

Trump told reporters he was unaware of Higgins’ comments and reiterated that the US had enjoyed cleaner air and water since he became president, a claim he also made in London.

Which would be a miracle if it were true, since he repealed various clean water regulations.



They’re still thinking about it

Jun 5th, 2019 3:00 pm | By

Trump’s off to Ireland now, to visit his impecunious (aka stone cold loser) golf course.

Trump’s visit to Ireland is not an official one, although he will meet with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar briefly at Shannon Airport. The visit is primarily for the president to stop off at his own golf resort at Doonbeg, in County Clare, where his ideological war on the environment takes something of a physical form.

A sprawling, luxury property, Doonbeg sits on the west coast of Ireland, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Trump opposed the construction of a wind farm near the site in 2014, and sent a celebratory tweet when the local council denied planning permission. There was a mild controversy in 2018 when it emerged he had lobbied Varadkar – then the Irish tourism minister – over the issue.

Then in 2017, the Trump organisation was granted permission to build a 38,000 tonne sea wall to protect the resort from sand dunes which were facing coastal erosion.

Facing what? Erosion? How is that possible? How could stable genius Donald Trump have bought a golf course in a spot subject to erosion?

Perhaps ironically, given Trump’s stance on climate change, his own lawyers included in their application that climate change was partially behind the coastal erosion.

Oh, well, yes, that kind of climate change. But that’s totally different from that other kind! That other kind that doesn’t exist, and that will go away as long as everybody agrees to keep the water clean crystal clean like crystal so clean despite repealing regulations against pollution of streams rivers lakes ponds oceans and the like. No the kind that’s eroding Don’s dunes is a very small Irish local kind that just affects this one spot. It’s different. Not the same.

Local people don’t want Don’s wall though, and it’s hung up in the planning process.

An Bord Pleanála – an independent, statutory body – who are considering the appeal, told The Independent: “The planning appeal is still under consideration. A decision on the appeal is unlikely to be made in the near future.”

Then they burst into giggles and hung up the phone.



Future generations yadda yadda

Jun 5th, 2019 10:40 am | By

We can watch him saying the unbelievably stupid and ignorant things.

At .40 Morgan asks what Choss said to him about climate change. There’s a pause while Trump struggles to engage his brain, and then he manages to think of the word “future.” Ah yes, that will help – future. It’s about the future. “What he really wants,” Don says ponderously, “and what he really feels warmly about, is…the future.” Pause for deep thought about this stunning insight. Choss isn’t warm about what climate change did to the Carthaginians, he’s warm about the future. New idea for our boy; he hadn’t thought of it in that light before.

Then some more deep thinking to come up with the magisterial summary that “What he wants” – hands doing the accordion gesture energetically – “is to make sure that future generations have climate that is good climate as opposed to…a disaster.” The accordion hands approach each other on this solemn thought.

“Good climate.” He doesn’t of course mean good climate as in stable climate that won’t produce huge changes in everything we and all other living creatures depend on for survival, because hunnhhhhhhh?? He means a nice day to play golf, for future generations.

How Piers Morgan managed to sit there and not scream “Are you serious??” in his face is beyond me. I know they’re buddies, I know they go way back, but just the same. (I wonder how Choss felt, trying to talk to that brick wall of stupid. Choss isn’t a genius himself, but compared to Trump he’s fucking Heisenberg.)

Morgan does at least cut him off when he starts babbling about crystal clear water – though he doesn’t, sadly, interrupt to remind him that he repealed several clean water regulations about five seconds after his inauguration. No, Morgan interrupts him to ask if he accepts that almost every scientists that looks into it thinks climate change is a real and present danger and that if we don’t tackle it now along with Chiner and India we’re gonna be in serious trouble, do you accept that.

Trump grabs it and runs – “You said it yourself – China, India, Russia.” Yes? What about them? We’re going to work with them?

No. “They have not very good air, not very good water, in the sense of pollution and cleanliness.”

He still has no idea what they’re talking about! Even though Morgan just spelled it out for him very clearly. I’ve never seen anything like it. He simply can’t take in new information. We knew this of course, but this is an opportunity to watch him failing to understand what is said to him before our disbelieving eyes.

It’s terrifying.

Then he confidently tells Morgan that climate change is now called “extreme weather,” and then he babbles about tornadoes. There were a lot of them in the 1890s, didja know that?

At the end we get his philosophy of life. Priss Choss doesn’t have to care about future generations…but he does because he’s a good person. It’s an extra, caring about future generations. Trump pretends to be impressed that Choss does, as a “very good person” – but really he thinks it’s just crankish. Future generations! Dude! Nobody has to care about them. You bring them with you on trips so they can impress the world with how nicely they clean up, but other than that…who cares.

Pass the bottled water.



Who wouldn’t?

Jun 5th, 2019 9:10 am | By

Din-dins at the pally was the first time Donald “The Pig” Trump and Kate Middleton met, but he had a history. What kind of history? The usual kind, of course: his history of insulting her on Twitter.

Back in 2012, French magazine Closer published photos of Middleton sunbathing topless.

That is, she and William were staying at a private house owned by relatives, and a photographer took stealth photos of her, which is an absolute shit thing to do. She wasn’t walking down Oxford Street with her tits out.

But Trump saw fit to scold her on Twitter – Trump, the guy who brags about grabbing women by the pussy, and does in fact grab women by the pussy. Trump who called his daughter “a piece of ass” on Howard Stern’s radio talk show.

Who wouldn’t spy on a woman in order to photograph her naked in order to sell the photos for big bucks? Everyone who isn’t a sleazy prurient misogynist shit, that’s who. Maybe Kate Middleton shouldn’t get naked to take a shower, either, because who knows, maybe somebody with a telephoto lens can get a shot through the window.

They sued, by the way, and the magazine lost and had to pay a settlement. Trump’s legal theory is bullshit.

I’d love to think she spat in his eye at the din-din, but I don’t suppose she could.

Funny how it’s the women he goes after, isn’t it.