Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Assassin
2. Trans
3. France
4. Syria
5. Screening
6. Orion
7. InfoWars
1. Assassin. The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down in NYC Dec 4, shot in the back in the early morning. While just another murder in NYC, the story has legs on several levels. First is the cheerleading by journalists who claim that UnitedHealthcare was beastly to its customers (very good at denying claims), and the CEO got what was coming to him. This was echoed by more than a few democrat politicians returning to their Marxist roots. The perp ended up being yet another radicalized Ivy League graduate. And finally, the whole affair may signal a move of the political left away from its recent infatuation with race (DEI, wokeness, CRT, etc) and back to their Marxist class warfare roots. Those roots allow and celebrate brute force removal of their targets from the gene pool, political and otherwise. Reason for the assassination pushed by the media mob was the perp’s dissatisfaction with UnitedHealthcare which apparently has one of the highest denial of service rates in the industry. Media has been furiously making the case that the victim got what was coming to him, something the other crazies on the political left started picking up on and echoing, creating new threats to new health care industry targets. Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) chimed right in to the newly deadly me-too chorus early on and then spent several days afterwards crawfishing her way back out of her stated position. This sort of worldview sits quite nicely on the shoulders of the Marxists, who wish death for those who are insufficiently expansive with corporate money, money that doesn’t belong to the Marxists. Of course, the very worst perpetrators of care denial are government associated health care entities (Medicare, Medicaid, NHS, or other national health care entities), and nobody has suggested gunning them down as yet. Maybe they should. The Marxists certainly won’t, as the governments are Their Guys, and must be protected and defended at all costs. For his part, the perp was apparently in pain, with a back injury that led to an operation. Once you start going under the knife for any malady, the chances increase for poor outcomes. In his case, he was apparently in a great deal of pain, something that will permanently modify your outlook on life as the body and mind are intimately connected. Early speculation was that he was a disgruntled UnitedHealthcare customer. Turns out he was not but selected the company as a convenient target for his anger. One cautionary observation out of this follows. As much as the media has been playing the Marxist serves him right drum, assassinations rarely improve things. The only, and I hesitate to say only thing is that any industry, indeed any entity that is widely hated needs to learn is to get a better business model in place. Sooner would be better than later as the Marxists and their bomb throwing, brainwashing toadies do their level best to inflame the public mob. We ought not to be celebrating assassinations for any reason.
2. Trans. SCOTUS heard arguments Dec 4 on a case involving TN ban on gender-affirming care (chemical castration and medical mutilation) for kids under age 18. The case smoked out all the Usual Suspects. During arguments Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji-Brown Jackson vied for the award of stupidest Supreme Court Justice with some remarkably inane questions and comments. Remember that Ketanji-Brown (in)famously responded during her confirmation hearings that she could not define what a woman was. This time around, she likened the ban on hormone treatments for minors to long gone laws against interracial marriage. The ever brilliant Alito noted that unlike sex or race, trans identity was not an immutable category. The ACLU lawyer fighting to overturn the TN law finally had to admit that trans individuals could change their minds, a tough position as the puberty blockers and medical mutilation procedures are typically irreversible. AMAC listed 6 false claims used by Kentani-Brown and the ACLU to support the use of these treatments on children:
- Puberty blockers are reversible. The Solicitor General repeatedly went on to claim that puberty blockers have no effect on fertility and their use simply pauses the process of puberty. This could not be more wrong and is not supported in any medical context.
- Suicidality. The ACLU lawyer claimed that it is clearly established in the science that medications reduce the risk of depression, anxiety and suicide. FDA studies demonstrate otherwise. Threats of suicide for children not put on the track to transition are the go-to tool used by medical advocates against reluctant parents. Turns out the treatments never improve anything and, in many cases, make it worse.
- Transition advocates repeatedly suggest that puberty causes harm to people who identify as genders different from their birth. The problem with this is that as puberty progresses, those who are confused quite often simply grow out of it.
- Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji-Brown repeatedly claimed that the TN ban on transitioning medical treatment would also ban the use of cross-sex hormones for other medical treatments, something the State of TN has long denied.
- Justice Kagan claimed that one of the purposes of the law is to encourage and enforce gender conformity. The lawyer representing TN responded that Kagan’s quotes were taken out of context. The law does not set standards for masculinity or femineity. If any side is advocating gender conformity, it is the trans community and their money grubbing cheerleaders.
- Finally, Ketanji-Brown Jackson repeatedly compared the TN law with a long gone VA law banning interracial marriage struck down by SCOTUS in 1967.
3. France. When you intentionally diddle the will of the people in an attempt to retain power at all costs, bad things happen. Such is the case in France, where President Macron’s hand selected Prime Minister was removed from office last week via a no-confidence vote. Remember the disaster of the last French election, a snap election called by Macron when it became clear his coalition was about to be destroyed by Marine LePen. While Macron was able to sufficiently diddle the candidates running or dropping out during the Parliamentary runoff election last summer to marginalize LePen’s National Rally party by ensuring fewer victories and freeze them out of the final parliamentary win total, he was not able to elect enough of his friendlies to set up an operable national government. Worse, due to a provision in the French Constitution that does not allow multiple national elections every year, the system is essentially frozen in place until next June. As Macron refuses to stand down, which likely wouldn’t solve anything but would improve things a bit, Parliament will spend the upcoming months trying to organize. Meanwhile, Macron’s government is going after LePen with lawfare, attempting to remove her from the political board not unlike the O’Bama – Biden lawfare against Trump. French media is just as leftist as US media, as National Rally is universally referred to as a far-right political party. This is a mess that is going to fester for a while, a problem created by Macron in his silly attempt to retain power for the foreseeable future. Macron made much the same mistake as the democrats did in 2020, and this mistake will ultimately destroy his political career and his party.
4. Syria. A CIA-funded coalition removed the Bashar Al-Assad regime from office last week. He bugged out as Damascus fell and is reportedly in Russia. There is some speculation that his jet crashed on the way out, though that looks more like the pilot turning off the transponder / IFF/SIF equipment off for a while on the way out. Egress would have required travel over Turkey or N Iraq. Nobody has taken credit for the coalition that flipped the government and there appear to be no small number of Islamist dead enders involved. We do know that Iran was not behind it, nor was Russia, as they lost a warm water port. The coalition seems to put Turkey and Israel in charge. Israel responded by destroying a number of Syrian military sites, weapons depots, possible NBC sites, and as much equipment as they could find. And Assad had a lot of equipment, no small amount of it flown or driven in from the fall of Iraq 30+ years ago. Nobody in the US is talking about American involvement outside of Mike Benz, who points to the involvement of USAID, a known CIA money conduit as proof of CIA participation or even leadership. I would also not discount completely participation of Israel in this, as they have been busily rolling up all Iranian proxies in their part of the world over the course of the last year. And Syria was nothing other than an Iranian proxy, a forward base for their activities in the region.
5. Screening. An abortive attempt over the course of last week to screen all visitors to the Alaska Capital building for weapons came and went. Now that we have democrat-led “bipartisan coalitions” in both houses of the legislature, they started doing what democrats always do, banning guns from the capital building. The Legislative Council announced a week ago they were considering a TSA-like screening of all visitors to the capital building for guns, knives and other dangerous objects. That lasted less than a week before they reversed their plan. Apparently, public comment was blistering, as were the responses by legislators, many who are regularly armed while at work. My comment was that the new screening procedure was fine as long as every single person in and out of the building also get the full treatment (this includes the Governor), and nobody was allowed to carry anything. If you’re going to create a free fire zone, then everyone needs to play.
6. Orion. I am reminded of a 1962 quote by Casey Stengel, then manager of the NY Mets. After his catcher drops yet another ball, he growls “Can anyone here play this game?” This comes out of NASA and its heat shield problems with their new Orion capsule. Orion is the manned part of their Artemis stack, intended to ferry astronauts to the vicinity of the moon. It has been tested once and did pretty well until reentry, when large chunks of the heat shield were lost during reentry. It turns out that during reentry, the outer coating of the heat shield was less permeable than it should have been. The shield heated up during reentry, gasses formed near the base of the shield (the part farthest away from space), and blasted chunks of heat shield off into space during reentry. NASA is currently trying to figure out how to fix the shield. Note that we did heat shields that worked at similar distances and speed during Apollo, 60 years ago, so we’ve been doing this a while. Artemis continues to be a problem.
7. InfoWars. A federal judge Tuesday rejected the sale of Infowars to The Onion. He said the sale left too much money on the table for the Sandy Hook families. The Infowars lawsuit was brought by families of the Sandy Hook school shooting after the Alex Jones entity said a series of highly inflammatory things about the school shooting and the participants. Remember that Infowars is a conspiracy theory locus. The parents found a backer for their civil lawsuits, got their lawsuit funded, and destroyed Jones and his business. From here, this looks little more than lawfare aimed at firearms manufacturers and right-wing organs that say unpleasant, and in this case, untruthful things in public than anything connected with anything resembling justice. A Texas jury agreed and threw Jones and his business into bankruptcy. So did a CT jury. Total judgment against Jones and Infowars was $1.5 billion. The bankruptcy judge is presiding over the legal picking over remining scraps of the business. The winning bid was The Onion’s $1.75 million. United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name and sells nutritional supplies bid $3.5 million. Interesting that the left can run around all day and night lying through their teeth, but little ever happens to them, though that may be changing with CBS $15 million payment to Donald Trump for a George Stephanopoulos lie about him.
More later –
- AG