The jackboots have made another normal person apologize

This isn't sad. This isn't pathetic. This is horrifying. This ought to leave one aghast.

Mario Lopez is facing backlash over comments he made in a recent interview that suggested it was “dangerous” for parents of children as young as 3 years old to definitively label their kids transgender.

The incoming Access Hollywood co-host appeared on The Candace Owens Show in June, where the conservative commentator brought up “this new trend where celebrities are coming out … and saying that their child is picking their gender.”

In response, Lopez told Owens he, too, was struggling to understand the mentality, and was “kind of blown away.”

“Look, I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids, obviously, and I think if you come from a place of love, you really can’t go wrong,” he said. “But at the same time, my God, if you’re 3 years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way, or you think you’re a boy or a girl or whatever the case may be, I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination then — ‘Okay, well then you’re going to be a boy or a girl,’ whatever the case may be. It’s sort of alarming and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on.”

Lopez, 45, has three children with wife Courtney: Gia Francesca, 8½, Dominic Luciano, 5½, and Santino Rafael, 3 weeks.

Continuing, Owens said that she was a tomboy as a child but grew out of the phase, which supported her belief that no one was able to make decisions about “sexuality” at the age of 3. As Owens conflated sexuality, which relates to sexual orientation, with the entirely separate gender identity, Lopez followed suit, responding, “When you’re a kid … You don’t know anything about sexuality, you’re just a kid.” 

The former Saved by the Bell star continued, encouraging parents of young children to “be the adult in the situation” and wait until the child’s “formative years” to have discussions and make declarations regarding gender.

“I personally think it’s just way too young to start making these… I know other parents who have certain parenting styles that I necessarily don’t agree with, but I do know they’re good people and they’re coming from a good place,” he said.

In a statement to PEOPLE on Wednesday, Lopez apologized for his remarks.

“The comments I made were ignorant and insensitive, and I now have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were,” he said. “I have been and always will be an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ community, and I am going to use this opportunity to better educate myself. Moving forward I will be more informed and thoughtful.” 

The forces that made him abruptly do an about-face are fiercely determined. They went to work right away, and they hammered away until they got their pound of flesh:

“Medical and psychological experts, and parents of children who are transgender, have long discredited the ideas that Mario Lopez shared last month,” GLAAD told PEOPLE in a statement. “The real ‘dangerous action’ is when someone with a public platform uses bad science to speak against a marginalized and vulnerable group of children. We spoke with Extra and it is clear that the showrunners do not support or share his view. They will address this issue on the show tonight. Lopez clearly needs a primer on trans issues. We reached out to his team to see if and how he will correct the record.”

Tweeted Queer Eye star Karamo Brown, “I’m disappointed to read [Lopez’s] comments about parents who support their child’s openness about their gender identity. As a social worker I am trained to identify abuse or neglect of a child. Healthy & safe dialogue w/ kids is neither abusive, neglectful or ‘dangerous.'”

“I don’t think @MarioLopezExtra should be ‘canceled,'” he continued. “But I do believe he should be given the opportunity to learn why his comments are harmful to trans youth and their parents. Mario, I’m ready to talk when you are.”

 

Wade Davis II, a former NFL star turned activist, also encouraged Lopez to educate himself on the difference between sexuality and gender.

“#MarioLopez should read more — being #Trans is about IDENTITY not sex,” he tweeted. “And trans folks understand that they are being treated differently from how they identity btw the ages of 3 & 5 & adults force gender on kids from birth. @MarioLopezExtra when all else fails — READ.”

Added songwriter Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, “Of our 5 kids, 2 are queer. They both came out in their early teens but we knew who they were way, way before then. Parents can tell the different [sic] between a 3 year old who pretends to be another gender for fun and one who feels they are living in the wrong body. STFU Mario Lopez.”

Others, like writer and transgender activist Parker Molloy, acknowledged that Lopez likely had no ill intentions, but needed to educate himself.

“I don’t think Mario Lopez meant any harm in his comments, by the way,” she tweeted. “I do think it speaks to a lot of the misinformation out there about trans kids, however. People and groups spread misinformation that gets regurgitated as fact, leading people to draw false conclusions.”

“Owens, on the other hand, is one of the people willingly pushing misinformation,” she continued. “She’s terrible. I hope Lopez reflects on this a bit, maybe meets with a trans kid or two to better understand where they’re coming from.” 

This is demonic. This is as dark as it gets. They got to a perfectly sensible adult human being - and parent.

Still doubt this is war?

 

Night one of Dem debate two - some thoughts

Mind you, I didn't watch it - my band had a rehearsal last night - so the take I'm forming is based on those I've gleaned from news and opinion sites and Twitter so far today.

Some points of general consensus among those sites:

John Delaney and Tim Ryan were the two, relatively speaking, moderates, and the the radicals bullied them right out of the race.

Marianne Williamson, according to a few conservative pundits, flat-out won the thing.

I like this little insight from Buzzfeed's Ben Smith via Jim Geraghty at National Review:

She’s the political candidate for people who aren’t that into politics. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed mentioned that a Marianne Williamson staffer told him, “when she visits the networks, reporters and producers sneer at her, but the makeup artists always cry when they meet her.”

 Some noteworthy tweets about some of the others:

Erick Erickson on Mayor Pete:

Erick Erickson‏Verified account @EWErickson

Just a reminder that Pete Buttigieg is an Episcopalian, so his understanding of Christianity isn't very deep or serious.

7:31 PM - 30 Jul 2019

Erick Erickson‏Verified account @EWErickson

Having progressive Christians lecture you about faith and scripture is like having communists tell you bread lines are good because it means people aren't starving.

7:29 AM - 31 Jul 2019

Jedidiah Bila on Fauxcahontas:

Jedediah Bila‏Verified account @JedediahBila

Warren is actually advocating that we publicly vow not to use a nuclear weapon unless another country uses it first. This is what she’s actually saying. Complete and total lunacy. Terrifying lunacy, actually.

7:22 PM - 30 Jul 2019

Katie Pavlich, also on Fauxcahontas:

Katie Pavlich‏Verified account @KatiePavlich

As Elizabeth Warren closes the night with complaints about cost of college for students, just remember she was paid $400,000 to teach one class.

7:41 PM - 30 Jul 2019

Tonight ought to be interesting for fans of blood sport. Biden vs. Harris. I don't know that I'll check in with any consistency. No real excuse tonight, except that I don't want to get a case of the sads over the state of one of post-America's two major political parties.

 

 

 

Barney and Clyde - episode 11

You look thirsty, and also in need of some insights into the cultural, economic and political matters currently on the nation's plate. You came to the right place, the Libation Station! Pull up a chair. May I pour you a bracing cocktail?
Episode 11; can you believe it?
This episode's segments:
1.) Bad ideas that will not die (the minimum wage)
2.) The fine line between caring and grandstanding (vaping, social media addiction)
3.) You'll never be woke enough (intersectionality creates a rift between lesbians and transgenders)

Please join the conversation in the comment section. 

We're really gratified at our growing viewership. Thanks!

Coats leaving as DNI and possibly being replaced by Ratcliffe: a regrettable situation

Coats has been a straight shooter from the get-go.

While he probably personally felt that the JCPOA was a bad idea, he reported that Iran was complying with its terms when Trump pulled out. Conversely, Coats poured cold water on Trump's coziness with Kim by telling Congress that North Korea would most certainly keep bolstering its nuclear capability, which it has.

(By the way, here's a great op-ed in the Washington Times by retired CIA officer Charles Faddis inviting us to consider that, given that Iran and North Korea are kindred spirits with a documented partnership, Iran may be looking at just buying some nukes off the shelf from NorKor.)

I'd like to see more specifics about this claim, but it does fit with so many people's observations about the Very Stable Genius's style of presiding:

In a sign of how dysfunctional President Trump’s relationship with the intelligence community has become already, some senior spies and analysts say having a political ally as DNI may not make much of a difference at this point. Trump, these senior officials point out, pays only sporadic attention to his daily briefings, routinely ignores analysis that contradicts his own views, and in many cases pursues policies that analysts have concluded are fruitless or misguided.

And given that Ratcliffe, whose background is as a Texas prosecutor and whose experience with intelligence is limited to seven months on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and given that he has an established track record as a Trump devotee, there's not likely to be a dissenting voice when push comes to shove in various world-stage situations.

So far, other great people in intelligence, national security and diplomacy functions seem likely to stick around for the tim being. It's just a matter of them getting the president's ear before any sycophants do.

A Trump tweet, trash and truth

Yes, it's another example of how the Very Stable Genius can't resist out-bullying someone who has attacked him.

And yes, Elijah Cummings was trying to score cheap political points by his depiction of border detention centers. So a strong argument can be made that he was asking for it.

In any case, can you find one subatomic particle of racism in these tweets?

“Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA. As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming[s’] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

That's just objective fact. The Orkin pest-control company has ranked Baltimore as the 9th most rat-infested city in the US, and the Baltimore Sun reported that Baltimore had the worst homicide rate of the nation's 50 largest cities last year. 

Bernie Sanders likened West Baltimore to a third-world country.

It's true that Trump's obnoxious style doesn't exactly motivate a Democrat politician to earnestly address the urban blight he represents in Congress, but failing to do so just provides us with yet another example of how identity-politics grandstanding leaves glaring problems unsolved. To such a figure - as well as to CNN commentators whose careers hinge on finding excuses to express righteous indignation that distracts from problems going unsolved - an unfounded charge of racism is a highly effective way to take the heat off.

Friday roundup

On the heels of the New York Times pouring cold water on moon landing anniversary celebrations by pointing out that that achievement did not meet modern woke diversity standards comes this reason for considering Leonardo DiCaprio's career problematic:

In response to a glowing profile in The Hollywood Reporter that hailed the "Titanic" actor as "the last movie star" in preparation for the upcoming release of "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" — his second collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino — film critic Guy Lodge of The Guardian and Variety blasted DiCaprio on Twitter for not working with a single woman director since 1995's "Total Eclipse."

"This is all well and good, and some fine work has come out of it, but I wouldn't call his choices adventurous either: huge studio prestige productions with established male directors," Lodge wrote on Twitter, according to Indiewire. "He hasn't acted in a film with a female director since 1995, which I don't think is an insignificant fact … I like that he's choosy, and resistant to franchise fodder: he's played his career well. But at this level of stardom, he has the clout to get riskier ideas (and talents) off the ground."

Today's entry from the The-UN-Is-Utter-Garbage file:

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan were among members of the UN’s 54-nation economic and social council, a principal organ of the world body, who voted to single out and condemn Israel yesterday as the only country in the world that violates women’s rights.

The Jewish state was harshly and repeatedly condemned in a resolution, adopted 40 to 2 with 9 abstentions and 3 absent (see breakdown below), for allegedly being the “major obstacle” for Palestinian women “with regard to their advancement, self-reliance, and integration in the development of their society.”

Out of 20 items on the UN Economic and Social Council’s 2018-2019 agenda, only one — Item No. 16 against Israel — focuses on condemning a specific country. All the other focus areas concern global topics such as disaster relief assistance and the use of science and technology for development.

The resolution completely ignores how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities—the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza—nor does it mention how women are discriminated against within patriarchal Palestinian society.

Moreover, ECOSOC concluded its annual session by ignoring the world’s worst abusers of women’s rights, refusing to pass a single resolution on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, or DR Congo, all of which ranked in the top ten worst countries in last year’s Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum.

Dude, why are you putting your employer in this sticky situation? Why don't you just go find another job where your indulgence in resentment of your DNA isn't going to be a customer service problem?

“I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I was just gasping for air.” 

That’s how Nancy Rost recalls the moments after her husband, Tom, walked through the door of their home six years ago this month. 

In his hand, Tom held a letter from a long-time employee. On his face, the easy confidence Nancy had seen from Tom every day since they met each other as children was missing, replaced by a palpable sense of anxiety.

Immediately, Tom and Nancy knew that the contents of the letter had the potential to devastate R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, which Tom’s grandfather had established in 1910 to serve grieving families throughout Detroit. As it stands now, Tom’s five-generation family business is in the hands of the Supreme Court, with oral arguments scheduled for Oct. 8.

So, what was in the letter? 

Anthony Stephens, a biological male employee who had agreed to and followed the funeral home’s sex-specific dress code for more than six years, intended to show up to work—as well as to the homes of grieving families—dressed as a woman.

For years, Tom’s company had required employees to agree to and abide by a sex-specific dress code that aligned with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requirements. The regulation-consistent policy ensured that family members of a deceased loved one could focus on processing their grief, not on the funeral home or its employees.

Over the next two weeks, Tom carefully considered his situation. Tom was concerned for Stephens—a longtime, valued employee—and for Stephens’ family. He also had to consider the rest of his staff, including an 80-year-old female employee, who would be sharing the women’s restroom facility with Stephens. 

Finally, Tom pondered the impact on the funeral home’s clients.

In the end, Tom decided that he could not agree to Stephens’ proposal. That decision that was fully in line with federal law. Yet, in a matter of months, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the funeral home.

And then that body of unelected bureaucrats got a judicial-branch body to massage the wording of the relevant federal statute:

Later, following the commission’s urging, a federal court of appeal effectively redefined the word “sex” in federal law to mean “gender identity.”

The Cincinnati City Council has before it a resolution to aid and abet illegal aliens looking to circumvent fast-track deportation. Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld spewed a bunch of bleeding-heart boilerplate about members of the community who pay taxes and add to the diversity of their neighborhoods, but this fast-track initiative is for rounding up those who have been here less than two years, not the proverbial parent of a medical school student.

Sweden seems to be having second thoughts regarding the wisdom of flinging open its borders to hordes of people from very different cultures.

At Law & Liberty, Alan Mendenhall revisits Russell Kirk's 1957 classic Concise Guide to Conservatism. A taste:

In 12 brisk chapters, Kirk addresses the following themes: the essence of conservatism, religious faith, conscience, individuality, family, community, just government, private property, power, education, permanence, and change. He concludes with the question: “What is the Republic?” His answer: “a commonwealth in which as many things as possible are left to private and local management; and in which the state, far from obliterating classes and voluntary associations and private rights, shelters and respects all these.”

Anyone familiar with Kirk will recognize in the opening chapter the “chief principles” of conservatism that in The Portable Conservative Reader (1982) and The Conservative Mind (1953) he condenses into six “canons.” These involve a recognition of moral laws derived from God, a celebration of variety and diversity over coerced uniformity, the pursuit of justice, the protection of private property, a skepticism of power and centralization, a reverence for custom and tradition, and the rejection of utopianism or political programs predicated on a belief in the perfectibility of man.

Ilhan Omar splits with her husband. 

Ten truths I yearn to hear some aspirant to Congress or the presidency forthrightly assert

The global climate is not in crisis.

It is impossible by definition to have a right to health care. There is no such thing as a right to something that requires one's fellow human being to do something.

The minimum wage is bad and wrong for at least three reasons: It distorts the market value of an hour of labor, it entails government telling a private organization how to conduct its affairs, and it elbows the most economically vulnerable among us out of the job market.

It is always a mistake to legitimize rogue regimes.

Every school and business in America that has a diversity office should close it immediately.

Redistribution - that is, taking Citizen A's money at gunpoint to address the particular situation of Citizen B - is always an immoral use of government's power to tax.

The only two demographics in America against which there is systemic bigotry are Christians and Jews.

For all intents and purposes, all societies throughout history have been organized patriarchally.

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness.

Chances are slim that our culture's rot can be reversed.

Meanwhile, in northeast Asia . . .

Two incidents.

This:

There is a serious military confrontation going on in the Far East with Japan, South Korea, Russia, and China squaring off in the skies over 2 disputed islands in the Sea of Japan.

The incident began when South Korean military detected an incursion by a Russian A-50 command and control military aircraft that violated its airspace. Japan scrambled its own fighters and Russia responded by deploying some TU-95 bombers. Two Chinese H-6 bombers accompanied the Russia warplanes on sorties throughout the region.

A South Korean military spokesman said that they fired more than 300 warning shots at the Russian A-50. Russia vehemently denies they violated Korean airspace. The National Interest:

South Korean aircraft “conduced unprofessional maneuvers by crossing the course of Russian strategic missile carriers, threatening their security,” said the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to CNN. The ministry didn’t mention the A-50 command aircraft or the warning shots that South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to have occurred.

Russia also said, according to CNN, the flight was “carried out in order to deepen and develop Russian-Chinese relations” and was “not aimed against third countries.”

The Russian account was  disputed by Japan, which agreed with the South Korean military about the incident. CNN:

But in a statement Tuesday afternoon, Japan's Ministry of Defense backed up South Korea's claims, saying the A-50 had flown over the islands and that Tokyo had scrambled fighters to intercept.

In a further complication, both South Korea and Japan said that two Chinese H-6 bombers had joined the Russian military aircraft on sorties through the region as well.

Over the past few years, Russia has continuously buzzed U.S. warships and violated our airspace. The belief is that they are testing our response to potential conflicts. This very well may be a similar effort to determine readiness and responses by both Japan and South Korea.

And this:

[Two North Korean-launched missiles] travelled around 270 miles before falling into the Sea of Japan - also known as the East Sea -  say reports from the troubled region.

It is the first missile test reported since President Trump and North Korean leader met at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas at the end of June.

The White House, Pentagon and US State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

However, the joint chiefs said South Korean and US militaries were reportedly analysing details of the launches.

A US defence official said the secret launch appears to be similar to the recent May 2019 launch where two short range missiles were also launched.

Memo to the Very Stable Genius: North Korea is our enemy and Russia and China are our strategic adversaries. None of them are impressed by the appeal of possible "deals." This is real life and we're dealing with actors whose present positions are the distillation of centuries of cultural, ideological and geographic inputs that inherently make for interests at odds with ours.

Be prepared and wary. Patty-cake is a very dangerous way to proceed.

Mueller hearings thoughts

The LITD take is pretty consistent with what everybody from MSNBC's Brian Williams and ABC's Terry Moran and Dem luminaries such as Lawrence Tribe ("a disaster") and David Axelrod ("very painful") to Red State's Bonchie to Townhall's Guy Benson is saying: Mueller, through his answers and general demeanor, made it plain that he was a mere figurehead and that the report was basically put together by a team he really didn't know very well, one of which, Aaron Zebley, had represented the IT guy who smashed smashed some of Madame Bleachbit's cell phones, and another of which, Andrew Weissman, attended what was supposed to be Madame Bleachbit's 2016 victory party.

A detached and tired Mueller said he hadn't even heard of Fusion GPS. He didn't seem familiar with what was ostensibly his own letter to William Barr.

That's gonna be about all the space LITD devotes to this. Like most post-Americans, the two years of reportage on all the arcane details, all the testimony, all documentation of this meeting and that, made my head hurt And now that we know it was much ado about nothing, we can devote our powers of attention to actually important matters.

If The Squad still wants to talk about impeachment - well, go for it, girls. I just can't see you getting any takers.

When push comes to shove on Israel-hatred, The Squad does not have most House Dems on its side

Sandy, Rashid, Ilhan, let these numbers sink in:

Three hundred ninety-eight out of 432 seated members of the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to condemn the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, an amalgam of anti-Zionist interests that advocates for the delegitimization and ostracization of all Israeli institutions. It was a vote that Democrats would not have had to take but for the upstart progressives in their midst. The party’s progressive House freshmen have made a name for themselves by pushing their caucus to the left on a series of issues, one of which is support for America’s strategic alliance with Israel. They pushed too far.

And this appears to be a case of this chamber of the legislative branch living up to its name. The vote was truly representative of public opinion:

Twenty-seven states have adopted measures opposing the boycott of Israeli goods or imposing costs on institutions that comport with BDS’s demands. This March, Gallup found that 59 percent of American adults sympathize with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinian Authority. Only 21 percent backed the entities in Gaza and the West Bank. Although this represents a modest decline in support for Israel from 2018, pro-Israel sentiment remains palpable among a majority of Republicans and independents and a plurality of Democrats. Only among self-described “liberal Democrats” has sympathy for Israel collapsed to a virtually non-existent 3 percent.

And no, Ilhan darlin',  nobody's trampling on your First Amendment rights:

The anti-BDS resolution, she said, “attempts to delegitimize a certain people’s political speech and to send a message that our government can and will take action against speech it doesn’t like” (a federal judge in Arkansas has already dismissed Tlaib’s constitutional objections).

Now, this little utterance from Westchester Sandy is kind of creepy, don't you think?

“My concern with being overly punitive on nonviolent forms of protest is that it forces people into other channels,” said squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The congresswoman has a habit of speaking in vague terms so that she can plausibly deny the obvious implication, but her meaning is clear enough; if boycotting Israeli goods isn’t an option, opponents of the Jewish state will be forced to take more drastic measures.

Steve Berman at The Resurgent likens it to an experience he had overseas once:

One time I was in Italy and parked my rental car on the street near a nice restaurant. A man came up and asked for 500 lira (back then before the euro, about $5). I asked through my interpreter, Guido, “what for?” He wants to watch your car so nothing happens to it. I began to decline when Guido said, “give him the money, or something willhappen to your car.”

AOC issued the equivalent statement that the man outside the restaurant gave me. Since Congress has voted to condemn BDS, which she claims is the non-violent path to destroying Israel (*snort*), that will leave the Jew-haters who voted her, Tlaib and Rep. Omar Ilhan into office no choice but to resort to violence.

Sorry, gals, but most people don't harbor your animosity for the only Western nation in the Middle East.

Exit question: will these chicks become more desperate and outlandish as they realize how unpopular they are, or will it spur them to start acting more like stateswomen, respectful of the institutions and traditions of the body in which they serve (and of US allies)?

 

Facebook takes sides in the lesbian - transgender dustup

One of the semi-regular segments on Barney & Clyde, the fortnightly podcast I co-host with libertarian Clyde Myers is "You'll Never Be Woke Enough." It's an opportunity to have a good guffaw over the Left eating its own. Intersectionality always finds something that doesn't pass muster.

This little item would make some fine content for that segment.

The lady was just pointing our some basic biology and how denial thereof intrudes on her ability to know just who she's dealing with when she's lookin' for a sweetie:

On Sunday evening, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being booted over her sexual orientation, told PJ Media she had been banned from Facebook for 30 days. Her crime? Saying that lesbians like her are not interested in intercourse with males who have male anatomy. She has been outspoken against transgender activists, who — among other things — insist that males who identify as women are really women, so lesbians must be romantically interested in them.

When PJ Media asked about the offending post, Ben-Shalom pointed to a photo with two t-shirts.

"It is a picture of 2 red t-shirts in 'Your photos,'" she wrote in an email. "One says 'D*kes Don't Want D**k Get Over It' and the other says, 'Women Have V*g*n*s Get Over It.'" The vulgar photo may be seen here.

While the messages on the t-shirts are vulgar, they are anatomically correct. Ben-Shalom's Facebook profile is private, so she alleged that the people who "reported" her to Facebook must have gotten in by "a hack."

It's all rather exotic to me, but I see her point. Some of these folks who resent the DNA they were born with look pretty convincing with their dresses on. Bruce Jenner and Bradley Manning come to mind.

Look, I realize Facebook is a private-sector company and can set any policies it likes and even get rid of customers. The question of whether to break up Big Tech is not a front-burner issue for me - we could all stand to go outside and play and get our noses out of those damn screens - but that's pretty harsh.

Big companies tend to veer left. It's just the lay of the land these days. But Miriam's point will get out nonetheless.


UPDATE: Lest you think this is merely a debate over an abstraction - that Ben-Shalom is as free to pass up an overture from a sexually interested party as anyone else - consider this scenario:

This week, British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal (CHRC) — a self-described “quasi-judicial body created by the B.C. Human Rights Code” — held hearings on whether or not female beauticians should be forced to handle male genitalia. The complainant, known until Wednesday under the alias “J. Y.” owing to a court gag order, is Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv, a self-identified transgender woman.

Yaniv has filed 16 different complaints against estheticians in the past year. Yaniv argues that, as a transgender woman, being denied services on account of her gender identity was discriminatory. As “Jessica,” Yaniv explained on Twitter:

This is not about waxing. This about businesses and individuals using their religion and culture to refuse service to protected groups because -they- don’t agree with it or the person and use that to illegally discriminate contrary to the BC Human Rights Code and the CHRC.

But who said this was about waxing? This is about sex, surely. Yaniv is male — a male who has not made the surgical commitment necessary to pass as a female. On top of that, in the past year, Yaniv has presented unambiguously as a male on a number of sites including Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. And on top of that, Yaniv is a male who is sexually attracted to females.

The dude conveniently identifies as female whenever he gets a hankering to have his nads fondled. And where did this tribunal come up with a quorum of people who could resist laughing out loud at the preposterousness of the whole thing? Oh, wait, it has the term "human rights" in its name. Those outfits can always find some folks to earnestly ponder such nuttiness.

Budget deal thoughts

The dog-bites-man story would have been if Trump and congressional Republicans had actually demonstrated some spine and insisted on an abrupt shift in course.

You know, like looking squarely at the obvious reason we have a $23 trillion debt and insisting that the hemorrhaging stops here.

Instead, Trump tweets about a "real compromise" that preserved what he wanted out of it for "our great Military and Vets!"

It's not a great victory for anybody, because his particular win and those perceived to be so by Pelosi and Schumer are "funded" by a hollowed-out federal Treasury. Sure, at this moment, one can find a sum of money in it, but a near-future in which there is none except for interest payments while Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients insist on benefits that can no longer be provided - and Constitutionally specified government functions such as seeing to the nation's security are left to wither - breathes down the nation's neck.

And your tax dollars still pay for your fellow citizens to have holes popped in their skulls and their brains vacuumed out.

And the market price of a bushel of a given farm crop remains hopelessly distorted due to government's presence in what ought to be an agreement solely between buyer and seller.

Budget caps, hailed at their introduction as such a stellar idea, quickly fell to government's insatiable appetite:

The 2011 budget caps, remember, were part of the Republicans’ deal with President Obama, which they secured in exchange for letting some of President Bush’s tax cuts expire. To give the caps teeth, the deal included a sequester provision that imposed automatic, across-the-board spending cuts if Congress couldn’t figure out how to live within its means.

For a time, those spending caps actually worked.

Overall, federal outlays declined for three years straight after that agreement, when you adjust for inflation. As a share of GDP, spending shrank from 23.4% down to 20.2%. Lo and behold, the world didn’t come to an end.

Since then, however, Congress lost interest in spending restraint, and the floodgates reopened. Despite the technical existence of spending caps, outlays have shot up 19% in real terms since 2014. Spending is up nearly 9% in just the past two years alone. As a share of GDP, federal expenditures have crept back up to 21.3%.

And lefties have nothing to offer in this conversation. That is to say, their instinctual response is to call the 2017 tax cut irresponsible.

It is never irresponsible to let people keep what is theirs.  

Along with that supremely important moral point, it's important to reiterate the fact that government could take every last penny of the assets of everyone above millionaire status and it wouldn't stave off what we're facing.  It could take all the assets of everyone in the US and the prospect would still loom.

No, this is about the basic folly of enlisting American government to perform functions for which it was not designed. The two great givens of the human condition - sickness and old age - should be addressed by individuals and private associations of individuals. Over the course of the last century, an entirely different view of what government is for took root.

This says much about our collective lack of maturity. Real disaster becomes more probable every day, but the short-term gratification of "wins" for one's tribe are so powerful as to make even those who used to give lip service to a serious worldview quite willingly chose to be oblivious.

It is so very late in the day.

The Daily Beast piece about Mariano Rivera - some thoughts

I'm late to the game on chiming in on this - Hank Berrian at the Daily Wire, Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media, Guy Benson at Townhall, and David Harsanyi at The Federalist have all covered it commendably and in a timely fashion - but I'm still compelled to remark.

The original piece, by Robert Silverman, has in common with the New York Times editorial and the piece in The Nation about the moon-landing anniversary, the postmodern leftist zeal for imbuing those rare opportunities for post-Americans to celebrate innocuous yet momentous achievements with an ideological charge. The moon landing can't be commemorated without talking about aerospace research facilities crowding indigenous people in the Southern Hemisphere off their land, or how the USSR showed up the dearth of diversity among US astronauts. Similarly, Rivera's unanimous selection for the Baseball Hall of Fame has to be found to have some kind of taint, and - ah! - there it is! He's a sound-doctrine Christian!

No matter that Mariano is universally well-regarded and that his story, a Panamanian fisherman discovered by a Yankees scout who was playing in the World Series seven years later, is a classic tale of the nexus of fortune and fortitude.

But by the third paragraph of his piece, Silverman has to tie Mariano to Trump, which gives Silverman the opportunity to do what he really wanted to do with the project: express his disgust for Trump, for Israel's present administration, and for utterly uncontroversial Christian doctrine in the most throbbingly vitriolic terms at his disposal:

To this day, he is held up as the ideal athlete, bestowed with endless grace and an unflappable demeanor on the mound that belied a burning competitive desire. Rivera represents a nearly unbroken succession of Yankee greatness that stretches all the way back to the 1920s, from Ruth and Gehrig to DiMaggio and Mantle, and then Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter. 

And over the past three years, he’s also served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of a far-right government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque. It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.

Harsanyi makes short work of addressing that "served at the pleasure" business:

. . . the piece offers no evidence that Mariano has “served at the pleasure” of the Trump administration—even if you accept the debatable contention that the administration is racist.

Rivera didn’t join the pinstriped Sturmtruppen, he merely accepted a nomination to the Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. He signed onto the Opioid Drug Abuse Commission. He went to the White House as a delegate for the Special Olympics. He took “friendly photo op” as part of an interfaith conference in Israel with the U.S. ambassador to Israel. These days, I guess all of this qualifies as extremism. 

And Kruiser summarizes what all this adds up to:

Recapping Rivera's offenses according to Robert Silverman:

1. Wants to keep people off drugs.
2. Wants American kids to exercise and have fun.
3. Is Christian.
4. Staunchly supports one of the staunchest allies the United States has.

Basically a portrait of history's greatest monster right there.

Later in his piece, Silverman examines the context in which Mariano's positions and faith play out:

Even now, during a time when athlete activism is considered the norm, Bryant said questioning Israel’s policies or advocating on behalf of Palestinians remains political “dynamite.” When 500 civilians were killed by an extensive bombing campaign in 2014, former NBA players Dwight Howard and Amar’e Stoudemire offered tame support for Palestinian human rights. (Howard tweeted #FreePalestine, and Stoudemire posted an image on Instagram of an Israeli and Palestinian child with their arms wrapped around one another with the text “Pray for palestine” [sic] above their heads.) Both athletes were roundly criticized and deleted the posts. Howard then apologized at length.

Of course, as Benson points out, Silverman has nothing to say about

 . . . the context in which those deaths [along with other deaths Silverman mentions later in the piece] occurred, the violent agitation stirred up by the internationally-recognized terrorist organization that runs Gaza, the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas and Hezbollah, and the great lengths to which Israel goes to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths. The point of the story is that Israel is bad, as is Mariano Rivera, by extension. Any information that might cut against this ignorant narrative is simply omitted. 

Silverman is the kind of permanently infuriated post-American who sees civilizational hills to die on in soda straws, sexually normal actors playing transgenders, and NBA team owners being called what  they are.

He's also morally warped to a hideous degree.

His odious screed only merits oxygen as yet one more case study in the sum total of indicators of Western civilization's dire state of spiritual health.