Listen listen listen it turns out that Trump is all God’s idea. Makes sense.

Polls show that a large percentage of Trump supporters believe that God personally picked the twice-impeached, thrice-married, four-time-indicted former president to lead the United States — and Trump himself is now encouraging that belief.

Sure; why wouldn’t that be true? Naturally a god would pick an ignorant greedy mean lazy corrupt sadistic empty suit to take the top job in a nuclear-armed nation with a history of reckless adventures.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump promoted a video that flat-out declared that “God gave us Trump” as His personal representative to lead the United States of America.

Among other things, the video declared that God needed Trump to “fight the Marxists” in America while also working past midnight every night, despite the fact that leaked White House schedules showed that Trump spent almost every night watching Fox News instead of meeting with world leaders.

The video then purported to quote God as saying, “I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the Deep State and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.”

Ew. That’s a mental image I could have lived without. Also he doesn’t have a gentle bone in his body or thought in his head. He’s the most casually brutal human being most of us have ever seen.

That’s a very very very intelligent thing to say:

“If you can’t say it about women, you shouldn’t be able to say it about men without the same repercussions.”

So, you can’t talk about rape. You can’t say that women rape women because women aren’t equipped to rape women, and therefore you can’t say that men rape women, even though men are equipped to rape women and, as a sex, have a long history of raping women. What a handy way to shut women up!

Apparently there’s no such thing as a power imbalance of any kind ever, so you can’t talk about rich bosses exploiting poor workers, you can’t talk about prosperous safe powerful people exploiting and/or punishing struggling threatened powerless people. You have to pretend that everyone is on an equal footing right now this minute and therefore no one can accuse anyone of committing any form of injustice.

When did all this get straightened out and why weren’t we told?

Showing the more:

A young woman named Roya Heshmati shared her horrific ordeal of receiving 74 lashes for refusing to cover her hair. Despite her punishment, she remained defiant, refusing to wear the hijab during and after her lashing. Singing courageously, “In the name of women, in the name of life, the chains of slavery have been torn apart.” At the same time, Taliban arrested women of Afghanistan for “bad hijab”.

I call on all women across the globe to condemn this barbaric laws, and show their solidarity with the women of Iran and Afghanistan, who are suffering under the Taliban and Islamic Republic.

This is 21st century, and we need global unity to END gender apartheid regimes.

Read part of Roya’s story:

“This morning, I faced my sentence of 74 lashes for defying the mandatory hijab. Accompanied by my lawyer, I entered the District 7 prosecutor’s office, deliberately removing my hijab. Ignoring the officials’ orders to cover up, I stood my ground.

An officer threatened additional punishment if I didn’t comply, but I refused to wear the hijab. Defiantly, I was handcuffed and led to a basement room, akin to a medieval torture chamber.

In the execution room, with concrete walls and an ominous execution bed, the judge asked if I was okay. I remained silent, showing my resistance. Ordered to prepare for the lashes, I hung up my coat and scarf, refusing to wear the hijab despite their insistence.

As the lashes commenced, I silently recited a poem about liberation and resistance. Despite the pain, I didn’t let them see my suffering. After the punishment, I continued to defy their demands to wear the hijab, a symbol of my unwavering stance against oppression.” This is the reality of living under Sharia Laws. #LetUsTalk

Arguing over the campaign to get rid of Claudine Gay:

[T]he fallout at one of the nation’s elite universities is also illuminating the ways in which the political right is increasingly targeting education, with deliberate efforts to “take on” elite schools by stripping them of federal student loan money and undermine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and a parallel movement to undo K–12 education with laws that limit the teaching of history or ban books and classroom libraries.

The trouble here is that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs aren’t an unmistakable good even to people who aren’t on the political right. The lunacy that bubbles and festers around “trans rights” has made a lot of lefty jargon suspect even to many lefties. Like the word “inclusion” for instance – which means things like “including” men in everything that belongs to women, if those men say they are women. That kind of verbal manipulation tends to provoke suspicion of all progressive jargon, because how can we be confident it’s not all that stupid?

All too true.

See also: Can you remove all these references to Jews?

It’s not just the BBC.

It’s also – of course – the Guardian.

Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of children from the Nazis, was so modest that he rejected an initial proposal to make a film about him, according to the producer of One Life, the soon-to-be released biographical drama about the British humanitarian.

Iain Canning told the Observer that, about five years before Winton’s death in 2015 aged 106, he and fellow producer Emile Sherman visited him at his Maidenhead home during a break from shooting their film, The King’s Speech.

Over tea, they broached the subject of making a film about the man who helped save 669 children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, just before the beginning of the second world war, but Winton politely turned them down.

…

[Anthony Hopkins] was inspired to play a man who, alongside others, saved the lives of children who were otherwise destined for the gas chambers and furnaces of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belsen.

One Life, released on 1 January, tells the story of “Nicky” Winton who, as a young London broker, visited Prague in December 1938 and found families who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria. They were living in desperate conditions with little or no shelter or food, and under threat of Nazi invasion. He immediately responded to their plight and, in a race against time, tried to save as many children as he could before the borders closed.

Why were the children destined for the gas chambers? Why did the families flee the rise of the Nazis? It’s a secret; it must not be mentioned. The Guardian does very well: there’s not a single appearance of the words “Jew” and “Jewish” in the entire article.

Anything missing here?

The family of Sir Nicholas Winton, who organised the rescue of more than 600 children from the Nazis, say he refused to think of himself as a hero. The philanthropist is now the subject of a film which tells the story of him bringing them from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to the UK in 1939.

His grandson Laurence, who lives in Herefordshire, said the making of the film had been an emotional process. It also had a pertinent message about refugees today, he added.

Sir Nicholas, known as Nicky to his friends and family, saved 669 young children in the nine months leading up to the outbreak of World War Two.

Missing: the word “Jewish.” It seems it’s become an obscenity to the BBC.

Watch out, guys, don’t let women get away with anything. One minute it’s saying something, the next it’s your balls in a pickle jar.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is attached [sic] to direct an upcoming “Star Wars” film, making her the first woman to helm a film in the iconic franchise—but right-wing critics are blasting the movie as “woke” after Obaid-Chinoy said it’s “about time” a woman directed a “Star Wars” installment.

Hell yes, what business does a woman have saying women should participate in the common culture?

Obaid-Chinoy, a filmmaker known for directing feminist documentaries, was announced in April 2023 as director of an upcoming, unnamed film set in the “Star Wars” universe and starring Daisy Ridley—who portrayed protagonist Rey in the sequel trilogy of the main “Star Wars” series.

Obaid-Chinoy will be the first woman and the first person of color to direct a film set in the “Star Wars” universe.

Some right-wing pundits criticized Obaid-Chinoy, deeming her comments “woke,” and resurfaced remarks she made at a 2015 Women in the World summit in which she said she likes to “make men uncomfortable” through her art.

Shut up guys. Men make women uncomfortable via the movies they create all the time. Some men make some movies that are about nothing else. Lots of men love to make women uncomfortable.

Conservative pundits criticized Obaid-Chinoy’s comments, including Benny Johnson, who claimed the “Star Wars” franchise is “doomed.” Pundit Matt Walsh posted a video of Obaid-Chinoy’s Women in the World summit interview, stating the film is “destined to be Disney’s biggest flop yet.” “It’s like they ENJOY losing money,” the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok posted in response to Walsh.

Blah blah blah. Women are supposed to make dinner and spread their legs. Men are supposed to make the culture. It’s God’s plan.

Gee, I’d have thought that was illegal, and in fact it is illegal.

Trump businesses received $7.8 million in foreign payments during presidency

You don’t want that, see, because it can motivate the prez to do things for $$$ instead of for the common good.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, his businesses received at least $7.8 million in payments from the foreign governments and officials of 20 countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to a report released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The report argues that the payments violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, a provision that bars federal officials, including the president, from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress. That clause was central to a protracted legal debate when Democrats controlled the House and sought access to Trump’s financial records. The issue eventually landed at the Supreme Court, but there was no definitive ruling on whether Trump illegally profited from his presidency. Instead, the justices in 2021 said the cases were moot because Trump no longer held office.

In other words Trump and the Supremes waited it out. Score!

“These payments were made while these governments were promoting specific foreign policy goals with the Trump Administration and even, at times, with President Trump himself, and as they were requesting specific actions from the United States to advance their own national policy objectives,” according to the 155-page report released Thursday.

Sheer coincidence.

Trump is campaigning on his prowess as a treasonous criminal.

“Trump heading into the 2024 election has decided to go all in as being the pro-Jan. 6 candidate,” said Tom Joscelyn, a counterterrorism expert who served as a senior staff member on the Congressional Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. “He’s gone full steam ahead in praising and in his own way endorsing the Jan. 6 rioters and extremists who attacked the Capitol.”

And what is January 6? An attempted coup.

Trump launched the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign by playing a rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” sung by Jan. 6 defendants in jail. He frequently refers to that day as “beautiful” and says his supporters facing criminal charges are “January 6 patriots.” He refers to people in prison on Jan. 6-related charges as “hostages” in his stump speech. He has also hosted fundraisers for a controversial nonprofit group that financially supports Jan. 6 defendants, and campaign finance records show that his political action committee donated $10,000 to the group.

…

Trump’s stated promise to act as a “dictator” on day one of his presidency, alongside his description of his political enemies as “vermin,” his call for the “termination” of provisions in the Constitution and his claim that unauthorized immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, have led his critics to fear how he will use presidential power.

Ya think?

It’s women’s fault even when it’s a man being pissy.

Yahoo News sneers Disabled Biker Confronted By Trail Karen – but it turns out the “Trail Karen” is a man.

As POV cameras surge in popularity, many incidents of discourteous trail behavior have made their way to the internet.

Perhaps the worst was when a disabled rider was confronted by a man on the trail about his adaptive bike. Watch the video below.

In this video, a man was riding in the woods on his adaptive bike when a very rude mountain biker accosted him about whether his bike was legal in the park. Despite having no authority, the Karen took it upon himself to enforce wrongly perceived rules of the park.

Heads they win tails we lose. Rude women are Karens and rude men are…Karens. The “reporter” is named Zander Lingelbach-Pierce. I hope he gets a blister.

Fair Play for Women sent a letter to UN Women.

In December the UN Women’s UK committee appointed a male who presents in a highly sexualised stereotype of womanhood as an ambassador for women. We coordinated a letter from seventeen UK campaign groups to register our dismay, as reported in the Times today.

UN Women has made a point of demonstrating that it considers males can become women. It’s disappointing to see the UK committee go so far as to select a male to represent women. Their credibility is in tatters.

UN Women made such a point of demonstrating that it considers males can become women that it actually appointed a male to represent women. In other words UN Women made a point of insulting women, on purpose, with deep malice aforethought. Why bother to be UN Women at all then? Why not just give that up and be UN Men Who Pretend To Be Women instead?

From the letter:

We wish to register our dismay and disappointment at the appointment of a male activist, Munroe Bergdorf, as a UN Women UK champion. The female population of the UK is more than 33 million, yet you have ignored every one of us and chosen a male.

And not just any male, but a male who explicitly tells women to shut up about their womeny problems.

Munroe Bergdorf’s well-publicised activism is not pro-women. This person has objected to women making references to our female bodies. Yet many issues affecting women, such as FGM, child marriage and forced marriage, reproductive rights, male violence against women and girls, rape as a war crime, pregnancy and maternity healthcare, and more, are inextricably linked with our female biology. How can this person be a champion of women if these issues are deemed unmentionable?

And in case that’s not enough? The guy’s an asshole.

Bergdorf resigned as an adviser on LGBT+ to the UK Labour Party after previous homophobic and racist posts on social media were revealed. These included saying that “all white people” are “violent racists” and “fuck you, stupid dirty and smelly nigga”. There are numerous examples of homophobic messaging, using expressions like “faggot” and “old poof”, “hairy barren lesbian” and “barren…hairy dyke”.

So UN Women decided that’s the guy for them?

The UK has reason to be proud of its strong feminist credentials. We have a dynamic feminist sector with numerous campaign groups advocating for women and girls. If UN Women UK wants to select a women’s ambassador there is plenty of choice. To ignore all these pro- women activists in favour of a male advocating only for people like themselves seems like a deliberate message which many women in the UK and elsewhere will read as anti-female.

Your nomination for a women’s ambassador should be a female who is willing and determined to speak about the issues affecting women and girls. Munroe Bergdorf is unsuitable in every regard.

We call upon UN Women UK to reconsider.

But of course they won’t.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on As white Americans embraced the moonlight and magnolias.

I had known my (now) ex-wife for a year before we got married, and I knew she liked the movie. She was born in Louisiana, and would sometimes say things that made no sense to me as her personal point of pride at being from one of the 4 states that are the “real South.” The Mason-Dixon line was BS, she said. Only Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were the Real South. So, you can imagine what it felt like as we were driving through Mississippi on our way back from a honeymoon in New Orleans for her to say “Slavery wasn’t so bad. Some of them were even treated like members of the family.” It was one of the most sinking feelings I had ever had (and I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan, so you can imagine the depths.)

She didn’t get what is so wrong about people owning other people, let alone the subjection to whippings, rape, family separation, torture, and murder that the slaves were subject to. Imagine even living your whole life without the hope of every being free from the yoke of another. I think that’s the worst torture.

Do these people who romanticize the Old South and tour the Plantation homes in awe of their splendor have an ounce of human empathy? She didn’t get that someone who was a ‘house nigger” faced being sent out to the fields on a moment’s notice if they were imagined to be looking the wrong way at the daughter of a plantation owner, or for trying to learn to read. I tried to reason with the woman I had just married, but it was so ingrained in her by growing up in a culture that embraced such romanticism as depicted in this story. “Gone with the Wind” isn’t the only movie to depict the Reconstruction this way, either. “The Outlaw Josey Wales” is the story of a former Confederate driven from his land and his family murdered by the Union. And he was depicted as a hero, while the Union soldiers were depicted as bloodthirsty avengers.

It’s not virtue signaling to be disgusted by the influence that “Gone with the Wind,” movie and novel, have had on our society. It excuses the worst excesses of our history. And the attitude enables idiots to fly both the US Flag and the Stars and Bars on their trucks as patriots.

GWTW was not the reason we got divorced, but it was a sickening foreshadow of some of the conflicts to come.

(I never understood why Joan Baez covered “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down.” There must be some hidden meaning that I miss. Robbie Robertson said he got the idea from listening to family of Levon Helm talk about Reconstruction, and one could perhaps think of Virgil Caine, who was not a slaveholder, as an innocent victim in an existential power struggle in a country at war with itself.)

Dershowitz.

“One such powerful individual that Epstein forced then-minor Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with was former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein’s and well-known criminal defense attorney. Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions while she was a minor, not only in Florida but also on private planes, in New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.” (Attachment 9)

“Dershowitz came “pretty often” to Epstein’s Florida mansion and got massages while he was there” (Attachment 18, sworn testimony from Epstein’s housekeeper Juan Alessi)

“Massages” was code for sex.

The Times in June 2020 on this business of making moral judgements about the past, in particular with regard to slavery and the ways of thinking that made it possible:

But the 1939 classic — still the highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation — has enduringly shaped popular understanding of the Civil War and Reconstruction perhaps more than any other cultural artifact.

Before that of course it was The Birth of a Nation, as we talked about the other day. Both are disasters as shapers of popular understanding of the Civil War and Reconstruction. You might as well let Hitler’s favorite niece tell the story of the Holocaust. [Hitler had no niece. Hold the phone calls.]

The book was a surprise best-seller of massive proportions, and the movie broke all records. The thing mattered.

But even as white Americans embraced the moonlight and magnolias, African-Americans were registering objections. Soon after the producer David O. Selznick bought the rights, there were complaints that a movie version would incite violence, spread bigotry and even derail a proposed federal anti-lynching bill.

Something else it did, in my view, is plant and entrench an idea of Black people as born servants – as a kind of separate sub-species of human that is there to tighten the corsets and pick the cotton. Not bad, not necessarily officially inferior, just…destined. Destined to work for the white folks, and nothing else. All those movies and tv shows with a Mammy-equivalent in the kitchen and the nursery. She may even get some good lines, she may be shrewd or witty or both, but she is and always will be in service to the white folks. She won’t be doing the math for John Glenn, she won’t be Fanny Lou Hamer, she won’t be a doctor or lawyer or historian. She has her Place.

In 1936, Walter White, the secretary of the NAACP, wrote to [Selznick] expressing concern, and suggesting he hire someone, preferably an African-American, to check “possible errors” of fact and interpretation. “The writing of history of the Reconstruction period has been so completely confederatized during the last two or three generations that we naturally are somewhat anxious,” he wrote.

Selznick initially floated the name of one potential African-American adviser, but ultimately hired two whites, including a journalist friend of Mitchell’s, tasked with keeping the Southern speech authentic (a matter of great concern to some white fans of the novel who wrote to Selznick) and avoiding missteps on details like the appropriateness of Scarlett’s headgear at an evening party.

Point entirely missed.

[T]he film put the nostalgic Lost Cause mythology — by that point, the dominant national view of the Civil War — front and center, starting with the opening title cards paying tribute to “a land of Cavaliers and Cotton fields,” a “pretty world where Gallantry took its last bow.”

Are you able to hold on to your lunch? It’s a struggle here.

Among those who saw it around this time was a teenage Malcolm X. “I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug,” he wrote in his autobiography.

It is very very very cringe.

So. Sure, you can say that quarreling with GWTW is “virtue signaling” but you can also, or better yet instead, notice that the movie and the novel are full of racism signaling. Your call.

About this idea (or taunt) that discussion of slavery or colonial conquest and plunder or similar injustices in the past is mere “virtue signaling.” One, there is the fact that it is a taunt, and depending on the context can be a very snide one, but two there is the fact that there are other ways of looking at it, one of which is the “I could have been part of that” awareness.

That is to say, when we discuss the awful things that some people did to other people in the past, we’re not necessarily patting ourselves on the back; we can just as well be cringing at how easily we could have done the same depending on time and place of birth.

I can’t possibly be the only one who thinks about that in such discussions. Surely most people do! People who think enough to read about it, that is. People like Trump don’t, of course, but people who give a rat’s ass do.

It’s not “virtue signaling” so much as it is “thank fuck we didn’t live there at that time or we could have been doing what everyone else was doing.”

The inverse of that thought is “why wasn’t it as obvious to them as it is to us?” That question was a live one in the Congresses that preceded the Civil War. How did Preston Brooks manage to be so confident of his righteousness that he nearly killed Charles Sumner on the Senate floor? What wrongs are we overlooking that will be blindingly obvious 100 years from now?

I think that’s part of the reason trans ideology has such a firm grip: its fans are convinced it’s one of those revolutions that all decent people will approve of 100 years from now.

Fun fact: when people are asked what they would have done if they had been subjects in the Milgram experiment, the vast majority say they would have stopped pushing the button. That can’t be right, because in reality the vast majority did not stop. That’s a useful thing to remember, in my view. Maybe we wouldn’t have been abolitionists, maybe we wouldn’t have been anti-fascists. Maybe we wouldn’t have been on the less evil side. We don’t know, we can’t know.

It’s what they want.

Trump has referred to his opponents as “vermin” who are trying to “destroy America and to destroy the American dream,” and claimed that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation.” The Hitlerian overtones have not gone unnoticed. And yet, the man who promises to be a dictator on “day one” leads the GOP primary by 50 points. How could this be? The horrifying conclusion is that there is plenty of appetite within the party for this sort of rhetoric and it doesn’t turn many people off.

Surveys back this up. A recent poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers found that 42 percent of them were more likely to vote for Trump based on his assertion that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. Twenty-nine percent said the comments don’t matter, and 28 percent responded that it would make them less likely to vote for him. In a national poll, 42 percent of Republicans identified themselves as “MAGA” conservatives.

Which is to say, Hillary was correct. About half of Republicans hear Trump’s rhetoric and think, “Yes, this exactly what I want.” These are the Americans who believe they should be forever atop the social and political order because of their race and/or religion and are angry at society for changing in ways that have leveled the playing field even a little. Trump promised these voters that “I am your retribution,” and they are planning to hold him to it.

They were instructed and encouraged in this mindset by Fox News for years, and then along came Trump to make them even worse.

Some might point out that only 28 percent of U.S. voters are registered as Republicans. True, but Republican-leaning independents constitute another 17 percent, and actual swing voters are relatively rare. So the best-case scenario is that only 14 percent of voters are really dedicated to installing a fascist dictatorship. However, history tells us that that is a sufficient critical mass to send a country spinning into horror. When Milton Mayer visited Germany in the early 1950s to interview former low-level members of the Nazi party, he concluded that perhaps only a million out of 70 million Germans were “Fanatiker” (fanatics or true believers)—the rest were just along for the perks or to simply avoid unwanted scrutiny for lack of ideological purity.

And/or a mix of all three – a little true belief plus a little for the perks plus a little conformity.

Another one of those “how exactly is that a right” issues.

Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey said recently that “Israel is the only state in the world whose fundamental right to exist, within any borders at all, is openly denied by other states.” But Israel is the only nation with a “right to exist,” as the phrase is not commonly attached to any other country. And that’s the tell: This is not a legal concept, but a political one, available for broad interpretation and rhetorical weaponization.

I wonder if that’s true. Aren’t there claims that Cataluña is a nation? Weren’t there arguments about Pakistan’s right to exist as a nation during partition? What about Northern Ireland? Ukraine? Other former bits of what was the Soviet Union? Former bits of Yugoslavia? Rhodesia? To name only a few?

Questions of “existence” are typically left to theologians and philosophers, for good reason—pinning treaty obligations on issues of metaphysics is a recipe for confusion. So what can we say with honesty? Israel has no right to exist because no nation does; only people do. Israelis exist; so do Palestinians. They all have a right to exist but only because they are human beings. And there is no justice in securing your own right to exist by denying it to others.

But the question is about a right to exist, not existence itself. It’s an interesting question.

Warped reporting:

Transgender athletes face increased restrictions ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics compared to previous rules, as it was recently decided that they must have completed their transition before the age of 12 to avoid unfair advantages.

Transgender athletes face greater hurdles in qualifying for the upcoming Olympic Games, which will take place in Paris from 26 July to 11 August. It has been mandated that the transition must be completed before the age limit of 12, as doing so after that age could give an advantage over cisgender female competitors. 

That is, male athletes who cheat by claiming to be women will find it harder to cheat now that they are required to have completed “transition” before age 12.

Previously, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had issued guidelines that allowed any transgender athlete to compete as a woman as long as their testosterone levels were below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition. However, the current requirements have been changed to avoid disadvantaging cisgender women.

Women. The requirements have been changed to avoid blatantly cheating women.

Unsurprisingly, transgender athletes, who previously qualified to compete against cisgender female athletes, have not welcomed the new protections for female athletes. It appears that these restrictions are based on the premise of not disadvantaging cisgender women.

Male athletes who want to cheat women have not welcomed the new protections for female athletes, because they prevent the male athletes from cheating women. The point of the restrictions is to prevent male athletes from cheating women.

Do not turn away. Must watch.

H/t PeterN