This crap again.

Scarlett Moffatt and Jodie Whitaker lead worst dressed on #BAFTATV red carpet https://t.co/NuFa4jdkXE pic.twitter.com/edfFYRFOND

— Mirror Celeb (@MirrorCeleb) May 12, 2019

The article is just a string of photos like that and the “reporter,” James Brinsford, saying why he doesn’t like each dress.

Note the ratio.

The replies are uniformly hostile.

People are so weird – sitting down in cold blood to put together a thing like this that is nothing but  bullying intended to make people feel bad – women, specifically. They go to an event, they dress up the way they have to, they pose obligingly for photos, wearing their biggest smiles – and along comes ratbag to say they all look like crap. Meanness for the sake of it.

We need to stop.

Whoa, top class DARVO from the Trump gang!

The White House on Sunday decried Democratic-led congressional investigations, saying Democrats are refusing to abide by “rules and norms” that govern oversight authority as they issue subpoenas for documents the Trump administration refuses to hand over.

We’re not refusing to abide by “rules and norms,” you’re refusing to abide by “rules and norms.” So there!

“There are rules and norms governing congressional oversight of the executive branch, and the Democrats simply refuse to abide by them,” White House deputy press secretary Steve Groves said in a statement. “Democrats are demanding documents they know they have no legal right to see — including confidential communications between the President and foreign leaders and grand jury information that cannot be disclosed under the law.”

…

Last week, President Donald Trump invoked blanket executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report, preventing the House Judiciary Committee — which had previously subpoenaed the Justice Department for a full, underacted version of the report — from obtaining it.

Earlier Sunday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff criticized the President’s move, saying on ABC’s “This Week” that there’s no basis for Trump using executive privilege to keep Democrats from obtaining the full report.

“But here, the Trump administration has decided to say a blanket no; no to any kind of oversight whatsoever, no witnesses, no documents, no nothing, claiming executive privilege over things that it knows there is no basis for,” he said.

No you did.

Jesse Singal on the Ban Scholars move:

2/ less faith that, as a journalist who often writes about science, I will be able to continue using Twitter without getting punished for communicating scientifiically accurate infromation. Twitter is making a terrible and embarrassing error here that it should fix.

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 12, 2019

4/This is how you get the most important outlet in the world running an extremely misleading column on testosterone, the ACLU arguing women can compete w/and beat men in competitive sports. etc.

We're approaching a Soviet/fundamentalist/take your pick level of science denialism. pic.twitter.com/SJ6ia3NvLe

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 12, 2019

6/ In conclusion , Twitter, PLEASE suspend me for accurately citing the DSM. I am begging you. It would give me the perfect excuse to stay off this site and I will have too much pride and ego to delete my accurate tweets.

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 12, 2019

Ok let’s talk about that.

Transgenderism is an actual thing. Transethnicism, as far as we know, isn’t.

— Mitch Benn (@MitchBenn) May 11, 2019

What does it mean to say “transgenderism is an actual thing”?

It’s an actual thing in the sense that people talk about it a lot, but that’s not what Benn means, because he contrasts it with “transethnicism” which as far as we know, according to him, is not an actual thing.

So what does he mean? Presumably something like “an actual condition, not just a fashion or fad or subject of conversation.” But then how does he know it really is an actual condition, not just a fashion or fad or subject of conversation? Is his knowledge derived from the noisy shouting about it on Twitter? But that can’t be a good reason. Twitter shouting can’t be the criterion for distinguishing between an actual condition (physical? psychological?) and a fad.

And what part of transgenderism is the actual thing? Is it the feelings in the head, or is it the presentation of self? Is it dysphoria or is it a frilly little dress and red silk shoes?

And what makes that an actual thing while ruling out “transethnicism” as an actual thing? How can we know that?

I keep wondering where people get their confident knowledge on this subject when it’s all so…conceptual.

Nick Cohen writes that Britain is too fond of “characters” to call a far-right politician a far-right politician.

If you want to deceive the French public, you pose as an intellectual. In England, you pose as a character. Like a criminal on a witness protection programme, the ham actor who plays upper-class roles avoids the accountability that prevents democratic life degenerating into the feast of fools we see around us.

In the US you pose as a nice guy. (Women of course don’t get to play this game.) Joe Biden is recycling himself yet again because of all those cozy photos of him with Obama. Joe Biden is not a nice guy.

They get away with it because the old British ruling class never quite discredited itself. Every other major European country was ruled by fascists and communists in the 20th century and suffered occupation and collaboration. In Britain, it is still possible to adopt the mannerisms of the old elite and not be treated with the scorn and incomprehension a modern caricature of a Prussian general would receive in contemporary Germany.

So a Downton Abbey runs for centuries.

Britain’s privileged history explains the denial in part. We are a moderate island, runs the national myth, extremism happens over the water and far away. But the refusal to tear the masks away matters more. I have never seen a television broadcaster hold Farage to account for his blatant misrepresentations of the consequences of no deal.

The BBC could barely bring itself to cover his and his financial backers’ links to the Russian embassy. Journalists call Johnson “Boris”, as if he were a pal entitled to mates’ rates they would never grant a stranger. And when Eddie Mair, then of the BBC, did his job and subjected him to a tough interview in 2017, what would have been a routine occurrence in a healthy democracy caused a sensation.

Every slippery politician is looking for the same chummy consideration. Supporters of the Labour leader are trying to establish him as “Jeremy” rather than “Corbyn” or “Mr Corbyn”, to quote the most egregious example. Politicians become journalists and journalists become politicians, as the firewalls of democracy burn down. You don’t have to be famous to enjoy protection. Claire Fox, of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze, is inevitably one of the most immoral people in public life. She and her Revolutionary Communist party sect have covered up war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, justified IRA murders of civilians and defended child porn. Only when she stood for Farage’s party this month did most voters learn of her dark past. Why was it never mentioned in her hundreds of appearances on the BBC? The question answers itself. The BBC will not apply the same standards to its “talent” as it applies to others.

But hey, she’s probably never told a man he’s not a lesbian.

They have got to be kidding.

https://twitter.com/HJJoyceEcon/status/1127476326603079680

Andrew Gilligan in the Sunday Times:

People warned by the police over comments they made about transgender issues are launching a pressure group and legal action next week, challenging “Big Brother interference” with their free speech rights.

The Fair Cop campaign is headed by Harry Miller, 54, from Lincolnshire, who was visited at work in January by Humberside police for retweeting a limerick that said trans women had silicone breasts. The force admitted there was no crime, but described it as a “hate incident” and said it would be monitoring Miller’s and his wife’s social media accounts.

Others involved include the Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, who was given a police warning after getting into a row with a trans activist on Twitter; the journalist Caroline Farrow, who was threatened with an interview under caution for “misgendering” a trans person; and Kate Scottow, who was arrested in front of her children and held in a cell for seven hours after referring to a transgender woman as a man.

Police telling people that men are women and it’s a crime to deny it. I know I keep saying this but isn’t it funny how women have never had this level of police concern over actual threats and sustained abuse, while now mere “misgendering” merits an interview under caution.

The force defended its action against Miller as “proportionate” and said it had spoken to him after being passed “more than 30 tweets of a transphobic nature, not just a liked or retweeted limerick”. These included tweets saying that trans women were not women.

See that’s the thing. The police are using the Woke-Twitter definition of “transphobia,” which includes Wrong Pronouns and statements of fact such as “men are not women” and “men can’t be lesbians.” That’s…not phobic.

[For US readers – a “fair cop” is a legit collar; often followed by “guvnor.”]

They don’t think these things through at all, do they.

Temporary provisional acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney did an interview for CBS news the other day.

Of particular interest, though, was the exchange that began at the 23:12 mark of the conversation.

The host noted that the Treasury Department has refused a congressional order to turn over Donald Trump’s tax returns, and Garrett asked why. This was the exchange that followed:

MULVANEY: Because they are not entitled to see them by law. By the way, they know, especially on this one, they know they’re never going to get these documents. This is a pure show-pony-type of situation. They know the legal reasons they can get those documents –

GARRETT: Legitimate legislative function.

MULVANEY: Right. And they’re not even close to that… They’re just doing this to make the president look bad. They don’t care. This is not about information about the president. Keep in mind, all of the president’s financial holdings, by law, are disclosed. Want to know what the president owns? Want to know how he makes money? All of that stuff is, by law, I have to fill out my form by the end of next week. So does he. This is just about trying to embarrass the president.

GARRETT: What’s embarrassing about his tax records?

MULVANEY: That’s what they want to know.

Oops. Don’t they plan ahead at all? Don’t they come up with an explanation for why Trump is hiding his tax returns that doesn’t imply he knows they’ll document what a crook he is?

Not for the squeamish.

https://twitter.com/museofwoolwich/status/1126634702822084608

Mandatory school sex ed that will include teaching the students how to masturbate. Er…really?

Really.

Teachers who have specialist training will do it

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) May 10, 2019

Listen, you’re supposed to get that kind of sex ed on the street, behind the bike shed, from your first (or second or tenth) sex partner…anywhere but school.

Also, Tatchell has been known to defend “adult-child sexual relationships”, and people with expertise in the subject say that adults “teaching” children how to masturbate is grooming. Tatchell appears to be promoting mandatory, can’t opt out sex ed in school that will include grooming. Not his best idea.

Meanwhile Carl Benjamin is on the outs with YouTube.

YouTube has demonetised Carl Benjamin’s Sargon of Akkad video channel after the political commentator turned UKIP candidate made comments about raping a woman MP.

Earlier this week, West Midlands police announced an investigation into Benjamin’s remarks made in a YouTube video about Labour MP Jess Phillips, where the UKIP European election candidate questioned whether he’d rape her before concluding “nobody’s got that much beer”.

I was just objecting to Twitter’s permanent banning of a woman who told a boy he is not a lesbian. Should I also, to be consistent, object to YouTube’s demonitization (you should forgive the word) of Carl Benjamin’s YouTube?

There are two (or more) ways of looking at it. One is that no one should mess with anyone’s access to media outlets ever for any reason. Another is that no one should mess with anyone’s access to media outlets ever for stupid footling childish reasons. My way of looking at it is, clearly, the second. I don’t think Twitter should kick back and look dreamily at the sky while men use its outlet to hurl shit at women in their thousands and tens of thousands, and I also don’t think Twitter should banish a woman for telling a boy he’s not a lesbian. I realize it’s a terribly subtle and nuanced view, but there it is.

When contacted for comment on Friday, Benjamin sent BuzzFeed News an unrelated political statement about knife crime. Several of his online followers have been tweeting a statement claiming to be from Benjamin.

“YouTube let us know today that they have demonetised my YouTube channel, which as you know is my primary source of income, and how I support my family and team,” the statement reads.

It’s very profitable, talking trash about women on YouTube.

One of the better headlines:

UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin in Truro milkshake melee

Not a Truro milkshake melee!? The horror.

Two protesters have thrown milkshake at UKIP European election candidate Carl Benjamin at a rally.

Mr Benjamin was holding a gathering on Lemon Quay in Truro, Cornwall, with British activist Milo Yiannopoulos.

It is understood a man and a woman tried to target Mr Benjamin with the milkshake but missed.

So not really much of a melee then. Fortunately, by way of consolation, the Beeb provided a photo of blobs of what could be bird shit or puke or melting snow or a vanilla milkshake, helpfully captioned “Milkshake could be seen on the ground after the incident.”

It gets better though.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesperson said: “A milkshake was reportedly thrown over a member of the public by a man wearing black clothing and a white mask.

“Police carried out inquiries but the ‘victim’ did not make themselves known to officers.

“No official complaint has been received.”

A female protester was also prevented from throwing kippers at Mr Benjamin.

Try a handful of kedgeree next time.

Remember this from a few days ago?

https://twitter.com/anyabyke/status/1125481180168708097

Now Twitter has made the ban permanent.

https://twitter.com/boodleoops/status/1126937220370268160

Twitter is calling it “hateful conduct” to tell that boy he is not a lesbian. Twitter is saying that to tell that boy he is not a lesbian is “to promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people.”

Meanwhile relentless harassment and verbal abuse of women goes on unabated.

Sometimes…

Huge increase in UK same-sex couples seeking IVF and surrogates https://t.co/S7p16EdCMx

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) May 10, 2019

That is, huge increase in gay male couples seeking to rent women’s bodies to make them their very own bespoke baby. Lesbian couples don’t need to rent women to make a baby; men think they’re entitled to rent women to get whatever they want. Isn’t it funny how men don’t recognize or acknowledge the exploitation of renting women’s bodies, yet do manage to remember to disguise what they’re doing by talking about “same-sex couples” in the headline and the tweet?

Originally a comment by latsot on A roar rose from the crowd.

The UK is lost in a mire of racist sentiment. We’re sinking into the lie that things were better back then even when “then” means times like the 70s when absolutely everything was absolutely bad and the only reason we managed to keep our heads above the shit floating on every surface was… you know… those immigrants. Coming over here, the bastards, rescuing our economy and being totally fucked over because of it. You know, like those Windrush people, who we tricked into coming here to do the jobs we didn’t want to do and then we tried to deport their children and grandchildren? You know, those people? That great big fucking wedge of our society that makes Britain in the daylight such a brilliant place to live? That fucking wedge of society we turn against every time we’re feeling fucking petulant?

Racism has always been a seething undercurrent in Britain. That nice Mr Hitler was generally approved until he became a threat and when I grew up in the 70s my little town’s treatment of the not-so-white was horrific, even then. I mean, fucking horrific. And it hasn’t got much better, 40-odd years later. It’s a sickness that seems to invade people I used to think were friends. Are they getting worse? Am I getting better? Is it just that our society is increasingly fucked? I do not know.

But seriously, America. You buggers recently make us look like the most tolerant nation in history, even after we stole most other nations and made their people do what they were told. Including fucking America.

FOR FUCKS SAKE sort yourselves out.

Jennifer Rubin on Giuliani’s travel plans:

Democrats should call this out for what it is: Betrayal of, and disloyalty to, the United States.

Beyond that, the House should expeditiously pass a law making it mandatory for a campaign to report all contacts with foreign officials, prohibiting solicitation of information or action from a foreign government for the purpose of influencing a campaign, and making it illegal to knowingly use material provided directly or indirectly from a foreign government in a campaign.

Should Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refuse to take up the measure, he would confirm the moral degradation of the Republican Party and the same unpatriotic attitude that prompted him to oppose a robust warning in 2016 about Russian interference in the election.

Not that he needs to do any further confirming at this point. He’s already confirmed and confirmed and confirmed.

This would be nothing less than a repudiation of democracy, a willingness to become a vassal of hostile foreign powers for the sake of winning the election. In such a circumstance, Democrats should come right out and say it: The Republicans want to get hostile powers to help them win elections because those powers figure that Republican presidents will be patsies.

I am often asked whether the Republican Party can be rehabilitated. A party is made up of individuals; in this case, a group of elected leaders who uniformly invite foreign intervention in our election should be permanently disqualified from holding office. They have violated their oaths in the most egregious manner possible and cannot be entrusted with power again. Ever.

Too bad we can’t enforce it.

The theocrats are sneaking bible study into public schools via bullshittery.

Bible classes in public school could become increasingly common across the United States if other states follow Kentucky’s lead in passing legislation that encourages high schools to teach the Bible.

The bible is a historical document and a literary work, or rather a collection of literary works, and it’s also a religious text. It could be taught in public schools under the first two categories but the third one doesn’t belong there.

Activists on the religious right, through their legislative effort Project Blitz, drafted a law that encourages Bible classes in public schools and persuaded at least 10 state legislatures to introduce versions of it this year. Georgia and Arkansas recently passed bills that are awaiting their governors’ signatures.

Among the powerful fans of these public-school Bible classes: President Trump.

“Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible,” Trump tweeted in January. “Starting to make a turn back? Great!”

Trump is illiterate, so his opinion on the subject is worthless.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonpartisan advocacy group organizing opposition to the state laws, takes a dark view of Project Blitz. The organization coordinated a statement signed by numerous religious groups that oppose Project Blitz’s efforts — including the Union for Reform Judaism, the Hindu American Foundation, Muslim Advocates, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church.

Leave religious proselytizing to the professionals.