The NY Times looks at a Michigan bible college’s efforts to help Trump steal the election.

Last July, the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against all 16 of the state’s bogus Trump electors; she has said that her investigation remains open, raising questions about whether more charges might be coming. And while the Michigan indictments were the first stemming from the Trump campaign’s effort to seize electoral votes, at least four other swing states are now pursuing criminal investigations.

Hillsdale administrators declined to be interviewed for this article. But in response to written questions, the college said its officials had acted and spoken in a “personal capacity” regarding the 2020 election.

…

How did a small college in Michigan, self-defined by the idea that the project of American democracy is the realization of millenniums of Western wisdom, get mixed up in a plot to subvert it?

Millenniums? Have we given up on millennia? Just as we’ve apparently given up past-tense “forecast” for the clanging “forecasted”?

Anyway, yeah. Another way of putting it would be how could a conservative bible college see a Donald Trump as in any way acceptable? Don’t even conservative colleges and churches see the first and most basic filter as some form of human kindness? Don’t they have that initial screen that rejects mean angry hostile cruel venomous sadistic shits? If they don’t, why don’t they?

Maybe they cling to a tiny shred of that filter?

Like others in his intellectual camp, Arnn seemed to love Trumpism more than the man himself. (“There’s obviously a lot of things that are really great about that guy, but we don’t teach our students at Hillsdale College to act the way he does on all occasions,” he quipped during a 2017 speech.) 

Hurhur. So, not the “you can grab them by the pussy” part of him? The mocking a disabled reporter part? The threats, the sneers, the lies, the threats?

I don’t know. Journalism tends not to ask questions of that kind.

Reconstruction meets Trump:

[Last] Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence – or “bedlam” – if he loses the election. In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot for his part in the insurrection.

The two cases might appear to be disconnected, but they are inseparable in law and history. They are united by Congress’s Reconstruction-era action to enforce the 14th amendment’s extension of constitutional rights against the former Confederates’ campaign of racial and political violence – the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871.

Trump is a one-man KKK.

Smith has indicted Trump under the KKK Act, which incorporates the 14th amendment, section 3, of the constitution. The Colorado court’s disqualification comes under the third section of the amendment, which disqualifies from office anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States. There are clear and compelling reasons why Trump has been indicted under the KKK Act and disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. Those reasons are stated in the indictments and court rulings.

Trump has been charged on the same grounds that Klansmen were prosecuted, not only during Reconstruction but also during the civil rights era of the 1960s, and he has been removed from the ballot on the same basis as Confederate traitors were removed from elective office.

…

It is precisely under section 241 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, upheld by the supreme court in an opinion that establishes the broadest possible application, that the justice department indicted Donald Trump on 1 August 2023. The indictment was not restricted to Trump’s activities during the January 6 US Capitol riot, but to the period of his conspiracy to stage a coup, a span that began after the election to the day he left office.

To wit, count 4: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”

The special prosecutor then made clear that the law that Trump had violated was the pertinent section of the KKK Act: “In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 241.”

Trump is the KKK brought back to life.

It’s massively depressing.

Tweeting from DragCon:

They’re no Karens.

From Fair Play for Women:

NEW REPORT: How trans inclusion in sport is harming women and girls

For years women and girls have been facing unfair, and sometimes unsafe, sport because of trans inclusion – which means male inclusion in women’s teams, events and changing rooms. You can read some background on that here and here is the timeline.

The scale of the problem, and its effect on women and girls, has been concealed by the fear around this issue. A culture of intimidation and silencing has forced women to keep quiet or walk away. This is not inclusion, it’s female exclusion.

That even understates it a little. It’s a culture of intimidation and silencing enforced by bullying, punishing, excluding, firing, arresting. It’s not just rhetoric, it’s not just threats of punishment, it’s punishment itself.

Fair Play For Women has heard personal reports from across 35 sports in the UK. From these, we have compiled around 50 personal testimonies representing 25 sports. We have protected their identities because they are worried about reprisals in their sport, or about the possible impact on relationships or on their jobs. Given that women have lost their jobs for expressing opinions about this, they are probably right to be cautious.

To put it mildly.

Our report gives them a voice. This, the first ever report on the impact of trans inclusion in the UK, shows a widespread problem, affecting many women and girls all over the country, at all levels, from juniors to masters and at all levels of competition and participation. Women and girls are being put at risk and their legitimate concerns disregarded. Their stories debunk the claims that this is a small problem, affecting only a few, and that it does no harm. They include big sports like football, athletics, swimming and cycling, and contact sports like judo, American football, ice hockey and roller-derby.

Read the report here

Oops.

Powerful ‘puberty blocker’ drugs given to hundreds of young people who are confused about their gender significantly risks lowering their IQs, a leading scientific expert has warned.

In an alarming study, Sallie Baxendale, professor of clinical neuropsychology at University College London, called for ‘urgent’ research into the impact of the drugs on children’s brain functions.

NHS England stopped routinely prescribing the drugs, which halt bodily changes in puberty, last year after a damning review found that the treatment could interrupt the process of the brain maturing.

But private gender clinics are still giving puberty suppressants to under 16s in the UK – and trans activists insist the drugs are safe.

And if activists don’t know, who does?!!

All very well, but…I can’t help wondering about a parallel BBC news item on a two day blackface convention. Would that happen?

DragCon UK: Drag queens gather for two-day convention

What do we think? Would there be a headline reading

“BlackfaceCon UK: Blackface minstrels gather for two-day convention”?

No, of course there wouldn’t.

Would there be a headline reading

“TowelheadCon UK: Turban-wearers gather for two-day convention”?

Nope.

Why is it ok to mock women but not other despised groups?

The BBC provides photo after photo of men clownishly dressed and shod and made up and hair-puffed.

Around 180 queens “sashayed” down the pink carpet for the official opening of the event before being welcomed by one of the judges on Drag Race UK Michelle Visage.

Hur hur ha ha. Women don’t walk, they sashay, or “sashay.” They do it on a pink carpet. It’s all so hilarious.

Cheryl Hole, Drag Race UK series one contestant from Chelmsford, said the event was a “fabulous” weekend.

Haw haw. Women are holes. You slay us, Beeb.

Surely this has to be parody.

Children wanting to transition ‘can ignore parents’, says Civil Service diversity ambassador

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a transwoman in the Department for Work and Pensions, compares puberty blockers to taking the contraceptive pill

Saorsa-Amatheia? Cod Irish plus cod Greek? Come on. Not to mention “Tweedale” – which gets us

Violet Tweedale, née Chambers (1862 – 10 December 1936), was a Scottish author, poet, and spiritualist. 

Saorsa-Amatheia’s granny no doubt.

So anyway:

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a transwoman civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), told colleagues that children who want to transition have the right to ignore their parents’ wishes and compared taking puberty blockers to taking the contraceptive pill.

The official also claimed that the belief that sex is binary is not “the modern scientific view” and that “there are as many genders as there are individuals because we’re all unique individuals”.

Nah we’re not. We think we are, but that’s our vanity. We’re “unique” in some basic literal senses, but over all we’re much of a muchnness. This goon is a nice illustration of how predictable it all is. “I’m unique, I’m fascinating, look at me!!” No, dude, we’ve seen it all before.

Trans women have a HUMAN RIGHT to fantasize in public about kidnapping women in a van.

Trans women have a HUMAN RIGHT to threaten and mock women, while women have no right to say that men are not women.

Make a note of it.

Well whaddya know, Yaniv is back at the old grift.

[Update: No he’s not, this story is from Jan 7 2020. H/t Evenera Bowman]

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

Older campers may recall 9/11/2001, when al-Qaeda activists kidnapped civilian airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center, in a dramatic protest against American neocolonialism and world trade.  Our British comrades immediately formed the Stop The War Coalition, to demand that the US declare a unilateral ceasefire with al-Qaeda.  We at PIMPLESL also insisted that the US refrain from any action other than quiet diplomacy, appeals to the UN, yoga, and aromatherapy.  We explained that if the US had a problem with the incineration of its airline passengers and office workers, that problem should be addressed at the root level by providing better dental care.  We also pointed out that it was hurtful to refer to the young activists who flew planes into the World Trade Center as “terrorists”.    

Unhappily, the US ignored all our demands.  It continued to use the term “terrorist”, and it employed military violence, going so far as to kill Mohammed Atef, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Anwar al-Awlaki, Khalid Habib, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and numerous other al-Qaeda militants. 

The time has come for PIMPLESL to return to the struggle.  We now demand that the US issue an official apology for its failure to declare a ceasefire on 9/12/2001.  We further demand that the US refrain from any military action against the Houthi activists on the shores of the Red Sea , who are currently kidnapping merchant ships and firing drones and missiles at the ships as a protest against world trade.  The US and the UK must institute a unilateral ceasefire for the Houthis’ benefit.

While our Houthi comrades demonstrate by preventing the movement of ships at sea, our PIMPLESL demonstrations will prevent movement of cars on land by blocking bridges, streets, and Interstate Highways.  When workers cannot get to work, or cannot get home from work, they will then take the first step toward revolution by paying attention to us.  This tactic follows directly from the tenets of our philosophy of Marxism-Leninism-Exhibitionism.  Our mottos are: no highway except our way, and from the river to the HOV lane, shut it all down.  We call our campaign the global interstateifada. 

From Courthouse News:

A Texas physician’s fears the Biden administration will cut federal funding for her medical practice for her refusal to treat transgender patients under 18 are unfounded, a Justice Department attorney told a Fifth Circuit panel Monday.

Dr. Susan Neese is an internal medicine specialist affiliated with a Baptist hospital in Amarillo, Texas.

She has several patients who are transgender or dealing with gender dysphoria, all of whom are in their 30s and 40s. She will not see transgender patients who are minors.

Unfortunately this is sloppily written. Is the doctor refusing to provide specifically trans “care” or is she refusing to provide any care at all? That needs to be made crystal clear at the outset.

Neese explained in court filings that she declined to help a 16-year-old get transitional hormones since she does not think minors’ brains are mature enough to fully understand the ramifications of their actions, and she was uncomfortable due to the complex medical and emotional issues involved.

“Dr. Neese is categorically unwilling to prescribe puberty blockers or hormone therapy to minors, or to assist a minor with transitioning,” she declared in a brief.

Ok so apparently the first three paragraphs are just wrong. Ffs people, refusing to provide quack gender “treatment” is not refusing to provide care of any kind. This is “courthouse news”?? Do better!

Doctors across the country are grappling with such scenarios as an estimated 1.6 million teenagers and adults in the U.S. identify as transgender — 43% of them under age 25, according to a June 2022 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.

Identifying as transgender isn’t a medical issue. It’s a thought in the head.

U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes was candid with the plaintiffs’ attorney, Jonathan Mitchell. “I don’t even understand why they brought this case,” she told him.

Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee, underscored that both Hurly and Neese see transgender patients. So, she observed, it is not like they are saying “I can’t help you because you are transgender.” 

Exactly, and that should have been made clear up front.

It’s a very bizarre (and of course destructive) situation, that doctors are being forced to provide harmful quack “treatment” to people who think they’re in the wrong body.

Can people really not figure this out by themselves?

National police guidance allowing transgender officers to strip search people of the opposite biological sex has been temporarily withdrawn after the Government raised concerns about women’s safety.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council told The Telegraph that it was conducting a “thorough” review of its guidance on searches conducted by transgender officers. “In the meantime, forces have been advised to revert to their own policies on strip searches,” the body said.

The review came after Chris Philp, the policing minister, said transgender officers should be stopped from conducting strip searches on suspects of the opposite sex unless they have changed their legal gender.

Hah? What does changing their legal gender have to do with anything? It’s not going to stop men abusing the women they strip search, is it. “Changing legal gender” isn’t magic. If there were such a thing as changing one’s legal species, it wouldn’t be magic, and it wouldn’t change a human into a manatee.

This weekend, three prominent campaign groups wrote to Mr Philp praising the Government’s decision to ask the National Police Chiefs Council to “look again” at guidance but insisting that obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC) should not qualify a trans woman police officer to strip search a female detainee.

My point exactly.

How do the police of all people manage to be so clueless about this? Unless of course the answer is just they’re not clueless, they’re just mostly men, and they don’t give a shit.

The letter, signed by leaders of the Sex Matters, the Women’s Rights Network, and Fair Play for Women groups, stated: “We were pleased to hear you confirm to the Home Affairs Select Committee this week that the government does not support the policy of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) which allows male officers who identify as women to undertake searches, including strip and intimate searches, of detainees of the opposite sex.”

But they added: “We do not agree with your statement to the Home Affairs Select Committee that if a police officer has a gender-recognition certificate (GRC) they must be allowed to search detainees of the opposite sex. As you recognise, it is likely to be humiliating and frightening for a woman to be searched by a male officer. It is no different if that officer has a certificate.”

How could it be? It’s so churchy – but look, it’s written down, it’s on paper – obviously it’s true!

Addressing the Commons home affairs committee on Wednesday, Mr Philp told MPs: “The Pace [Police and Criminal Evidence Act] codes that govern stop and search and strip search in particular are very clear that those should be conducted by someone of the same sex. I am also very clear that, for reasons particularly of women’s safety, that means someone of the same born biological sex or in possession of a formal court authorised gender recognition certificate.

Which is magic! Because it’s formal! And court! And authorised! And a certficate! That’s four things, and four is enough to change reality!

The Florida Butcher is still at it.

Do watch the clip. It’s blood-chilling.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Validate or else.

That’s Kathleen Stock’s insight: that people who call themselves trans are immersed in a dangerous fiction. Immersion in fiction can be a fine thing, and it can be a harmless thing, but if it gets hooked into a fad for “validating” the fiction as rock-solid truth…not so much.

What’s worse, is that the kids don’t know what kind of fiction they’re getting immersed into. The adults playing along with this fiction have their own agenda, and the kids aren’t being let in on it.

To many adult men, transgender is a special kind of immersive fiction, distinct from the nerdy hobby of live-action role-playing (LARPing).

Larpers get together in groups, and enact their roleplaying personas while they’re among the group, and revert to their real selves when interacting with people outside the group, or when they’re not actively “in session.”

But trans is more akin to kayfabe, a word that came into use at the turn of the last century as “professional” wrestling emerged among the travelling carnivals and sideshows that roved the American frontier. (Its etymology is unclear, but it’s probably derived from pig latin for “be fake.”) Kayfabe is like the reverse of Larping: you can let your guard down and be your true self only when you’re alone with your in-group peers; in the presence of outsiders you must always maintain the illusion that your roleplaying persona is real.

Wrestlers depended on elaborate fictional backstories and soap opera-like rivalries to generate excitement and draw crowds to thier (rigged, performative) bouts. Their livelihoods came to depend on keeping up the illusion that these personas were real; if word got out that they were faking it, the whole profession could collapse for loss of viewership.

“Pro” wrestling continues to this day, and the omertà of kayfabe was strictly maintained until as recently as 1989, when executives from the World Wrestling Federation, facing athletic regulation laws, testified to the New Jersey state senate and for the first time publicly admitted that wrestling superstars like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were, in fact, paid entertainers and not professional athletes. Up until then, many of wrestlers’ own relatives were kept in the dark about how fake the whole thing was.

Fetishistic trans-identifying men are just like pro wrestlers in this regard. When they’re alone with each other they’re completely open about being fetishistic men, and they make and share pornographic videos with each other, etc. But in the presence of outsiders, ma’am’s the word. The lie must be maintained or the whole enterprise could collapse: no more unfettered access to women’s spaces and no more power to force everyone else to play along with their fantasy.

A clear example of a trans person’s private reality vs. public kayfabe is Lia Thomas’s social media: his public Instagram account is the usual guff about protecting trans kids and trans women are women blablabla… But he has a second, private Instagram account, which he uses to interact with his private circle of fellow fetishists and to allegedly share content about fetishistic transvestism and porn.

All of this is to say that these fetishists aren’t upfront that it’s all kayfabe to the children and their famililes they’re targeting, or with the institutions that are backing them. They’re not being let in on the scheme. This can and will be devastating to a lot of kids when they grow up and realize that most of the people leading the “trans community” are conspiring together in a lie to serve their personal, private sexual fantasies.

Julie Bindel on “conversion therapy” and the laws.

The [Scottish National] party has proposed a new law that could criminalise parents for refusing to fully validate their child as transgender.

Among the actions that could be criminalised are preventing someone from “dressing in a way that reflects their sexual orientation or gender identity”, even if that decision were to be taken by a parent acting to protect their child from gender ideologues.

The SNP proposed a law to force parents to encourage their children to believe in a delusion.

Five or ten years from now will the SNP be writing laws to force parents to let their children dress up as dogs, sheep, dolphins? Not for parties or giggles but for daily life, including school?

Over the past decade, the number of children claiming to be transgender or non-binary has rocketed, as has the number accessing gender clinics.

The facts are shocking. A high proportion of children attending gender clinics have some form of autism; puberty blockers almost always lead a young person on to irreversible cross-sex hormones once they reach the age of 18, and the serious mental-health issues and trauma that the child may well be experiencing are often overlooked in favour of simply validating (labelling) them as transgender. 

Imagine if mental health issues caused children to think they are rabbits, weasels, frogs. Imagine how healthy it would be to encourage such delusions.

The interim Cass Review into the NHS Gender Identity Development Service was very clear that there is both a distinct lack of evidence about the effects of puberty-interrupting drugs on children and a great deal of confusion as to their purpose. Parents have not just the right, but a duty, to prevent their children from becoming immersed in a dangerous fiction that will affect them for the rest of their lives. 

That’s Kathleen Stock’s insight: that people who call themselves trans are immersed in a dangerous fiction. Immersion in fiction can be a fine thing, and it can be a harmless thing, but if it gets hooked into a fad for “validating” the fiction as rock-solid truth…not so much.

The left continues to blast away at its own feet.

Labour’s London region has suspended the party’s candidate for a closely-contested council by-election in Hackney following allegations of “transphobia“.

…

A Labour source has confirmed that the candidate, Laura Pascal (front right in photo), has been “administratively suspended”, which means a complaint has been made about her by another party member and a decision taken to investigate it.

The timing of the suspension means there is not enough time to nominate a different candidate in time for the by-election, which will be held next Thursday. This means that if Pascal wins, she will sit as an independent councillor. The source confirmed that Labour will do no further campaigning for her.

Labour doesn’t need its feet. It can get along fine without them.

Pascal’s views about biological sex and gender identity were known well before she was selected as the Cazenove candidate and are expressed in a pinned post on X/Twitter, published on 30 July last year.

She wrote: “My embodied reality as a member of the oppressed sex class is experienced in a world where biology has a significant impact. You can believe what you want but I believe that biological sex is a real thing and neither law or some kind of new scientific concensus wld change that.” In her X/Twitter profile she describes herself as “feminist”.

Well obviously Labour can’t allow that. The mystery is why she didn’t become a non-person on 30 July last year.

Social media critics of Pascal have characterised her selection as Labour embracing a “new wave of horrific transphobia” and have accused her of “bullying trans women“. In social media exchanges, Pascal has said: “trans women are not female. By definition they are male”.

Which is true, and furthermore not insulting or belittling or hatey. It’s just a fact.

On London understands there have been multiple complaints about Pascal, including alleged racism as well as transphobia.

I understand On London is allowing itself to insinuate that Pascal is a Bad Person without offering any evidence.

Déjà vu all over again eh Hahvahd?

Several Jewish students have filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, accusing it of becoming “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment”.

Harvard already was anti-Jewish, for generations, but in the other way – the Waspy snobby ew ick way, not the wokey trendy pro-Hamas way. It’s weird to see them make the full circle.

The lawsuit filed earlier this week mirrors others submitted since the 7 October Hamas attack on southern Israel, including legal action against the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In the Harvard lawsuit, the plaintiffs include members of the Students Against Antisemitism. They accuse Harvard of violating Jewish students’ civil rights and allege that the university tolerated Jewish students being harassed, assaulted and intimidated – behavior that has intensified since the 7 October mass killing.

…

Fallout from the Israel-Hamas war has roiled campuses across the US and reignited a debate over free speech. College leaders have struggled to define the line where political speech crosses into harassment and discrimination, with Jewish and Arab students raising concerns that their schools are doing too little to protect them.

The issue took center stage in December when the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT testified at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. Asked by Republican lawmakers whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policies, the presidents offered lawyerly answers and declined to say unequivocally that it was prohibited speech.

It’s interesting that lawmakers don’t want lawyerly answers.

The US Department of Education has repeatedly warned colleges that they are required to fight antisemitism and Islamophobia on their campuses or risk losing federal money.

Jumbled categories. “Semitism” is a racial or ethnic label, while Islam is a religion.

This subject doesn’t bring out the best in people’s thinking.

But this isn’t parody. Should be but isn’t.

The diktat by bosses at data watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office suggests that it is not enough to call employees by their chosen gender pronouns.

It says staff can show their support for trans colleagues by ‘thinking of the person as being the gender that they want you to think of them as’. 

Compliance not enough; visible actions not enough; you must think what we tell you to think.

Oh yeah? Well how are you gonna know? Magic?

The ICO’s Trans Policy and Guidance says its staff should ‘be guided by your trans colleague and their preferences’ in an effort to support them and they ‘must call a person by their chosen or preferred name’. 

It adds: ‘ICO staff can support trans colleagues or individuals who are transitioning by… Thinking of the person as being the gender that they want you to think of them as.’

But they can’t. Seriously. Adults should know this already. You can’t support people by thinking something for the simple reason that what you think is locked in your head; other people have no access to it. You can of course say you think it, perform thinking it, put post-it notes on the wall saying you think it, but none of that is the same as actually thinking it. Other people’s minds are a black box, and on a subject like this in an environment like this…I would be very very skeptical of any self-reports of “how I think of you, fellow-employee.” Anyway all this saying and putting on the wall isn’t what the ICO is demanding: they’re demanding the thinking itself. Well how are they going to check? Eh?

Aw come on, that has to be parody, doesn’t it?

Daughter wants to pretend-transition to boy so that she can transition to girl in a few years? That can’t be real. Can it? (And “we’ll lose the deal with TLC” sounds parodic too.)

AnnLesby – that’s a known parody-maker, right?

Trump owes the NY Times:

Former President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay the New York Times nearly $400,000 (£313,900) in legal fees for a failed lawsuit.

Mr Trump’s $100m lawsuit accused the newspaper and Mr Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, of “an insidious plot” to obtain his tax records. A judge dismissed it last year, saying its claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”.

Free press? Ring a bell, Don?

The lawsuit, over a 2018 investigation that alleged the former president was involved in “dubious tax schemes”, accused three journalists who reported on the story of working with Mr Trump’s niece as part of a “personal vendetta” against him. It claimed they relentlessly pursued her and convinced her to turn over documents.

Judge Reed dismissed the case in May, saying that the legal system has “long recognised that reporters are entitled to engage in legal and ordinary newsgathering activities”,

A “personal vendetta” ffs. He’s not some guy down the block, he was the head of state. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. Nobody needs a personal reason to want full information on his crimes and corruption.