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April 2022

Of Oranges, Balls and Sexual Shape-Shifting-Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/04/of-oranges-balls-and-sexual-shape-shifting/

A boy or girl, the parents asked? Well, the doctor averred, ‘Baby has a penis. Boy or girl? We’ll have to wait and see.’

That’s about where we are, I understand. But it isn’t so, is it? Those outside of relatively few loud-mouthed transgender cranks, the intimidated commentariat and woke elites aren’t following the bizarre script and never will. We, the great unwashed, easily distinguish between boys and girls.

Mind you, I’m sympathetic to prominent people being unwilling to try to define what a woman is; which seems to be the question of the moment posed by conservatives to embarrass lefties. To wit, Ketanji Brown Jackson put on the spot in the US Senate hearings.

If I had my wits about me, when asked the question, I’d say males have an X and Y sex chromosome pairing while females have an XX. But I might well forget which is which, if caught by surprise. Like forgetting the unemployment rate. And, I have no real idea what a chromosome is so wouldn’t want to be interrogated. I looked it up in my OED: “a thread like structure of nucleic acids and protein found in the nuclei of most living cells, carrying genetic information in in the form of genes.” OK, still double Dutch.

UK Opposition Leader Keir Starmer got into trouble for refusing to acknowledge that a woman can’t have a penis. That’s a little more problematic than being unable to define a woman. He should watch the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Kindergarten Cop, in which it’s made clear that “boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.” Now that’s one way to answer the question asked of Ms Jackson. But you can understand why this might not do in polite company. And it’s unthinkable that any remake of the movie (apropos the sequel in 2016) would include that kind of dialogue.

Palestinians Are Going to End Up Starting a Third Intifada

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/palestinians-are-going-to-end-up-starting-a-third-intifada/

After a slew of deadly terrorist attacks this month and now rioting in Jerusalem, it’s increasingly starting to look like there’s a coordinated effort by Palestinian authorities to spark another Intifada. It’s unsurprising. Every time Abu Mazen needs more funding to prop up his kleptocracy, he triggers new bloodshed and takes his case to the international community. The traditional way to accomplish this is by fanning false rumors about Jewish plans to appropriate Islamic holy sites.

Back in 1929 — before the modern state of Israel was formed or “occupied territories” existed — the father of Palestinian nationalism, Amin al-Husseini, used the Holy Mount site to spread blood libel and whip up violence that resulted in the murder of 133 Jews. In nearby Hebron, an ancient neighborhood was destroyed and 67 Jews were slaughtered by their neighbors. This same strategy has been implemented numerous times since. The pretext for the Second Intifada was an Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount area. Any openly Jewish presence near Al-Aqsa is considered a “provocation” by Palestinians. And international organizations help fuel their grievances by attempting to erase the religious and historical connection between the city and the Jewish people.

There has never been a shred of evidence to back the claim that Israel wants to eject Muslims from the Temple Mount. Indeed, after taking back the site from Jordan in 1967, Israel handed custodianship to the Hashemites and Waqf Muslim religious trust. To put that act into context, it’s worth remembering that before 1967, Jewish holy sites that were occupied by Arabs were treated as garbage dumps — and not much better today in Arab-controlled areas.

Divorce, Florida-Style- Trump Vs. De Santis Neal Freeman

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/divorce-florida-style/

Trouble ahead for Trump and DeSantis

Tallahassee, Fla. — Eavesdrop on any pair of political obsessives here — media types, campaign consultants, lobbyists, the rent-seekers of all parties — and you will hear them veer quickly toward the most reliable conversation-starter in this politically obsessed town. The Split. The political marriage of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, never passionate but for a time mutually convenient, is all but over. The only questions that remain are when it will end and how ugly it will get.

Trump likes to say, and he does so with Trumpian repetition, that in 2018 DeSantis was at 3 percent in the polls (not quite) and that without a Trump endorsement DeSantis would have lost the gubernatorial election (probably so). That spring, after trailing for months in statewide polls, DeSantis gave up running as DeSantis and began to run as Trump-Lite. His lead TV spot featured DeSantis sprawled on the living-room rug, teaching his toddling children how to build a wall with tiny blocks. That fall, DeSantis was elected by less than 1 percent of the vote over one of the worst Democratic candidates in state history: Andrew Gillum, a (formerly) closeted bisexual man, married to a woman, with a large drug problem and a wafer-thin resume.

In 2022, Trump says that DeSantis owes him, and invites DeSantis, with Trumpian repetition, to support Trump for 2024. DeSantis has declined the invitation and Trump, in turn, has declined to support DeSantis for election this year, after endorsing, among other notables, Dr. Oz, Mo Brooks, and Herschel Walker.

Can this marriage be saved? The consensus seems to be: no, and it is more likely to end with a bang than a whimper.

I count four scenarios advanced with more or less conviction by the obsessed.

Joe Biden Blew It on Masks: Charles Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/joe-biden-blew-it-on-masks/

For months, it has been obvious to everyone except the president and his inner circle what people really think about Covid restrictions.

‘Biden confronts a host of problems he can’t do much to solve.” So determines John Harwood of CNN.

There’s some truth to this, of course — although my sympathy for opportunistic progressives who discover that they are not, actually, omnipotent, is as limited as one might expect. Still, you’d assume that any president who was facing a tidal wave of bad news would be looking to rack up as many little wins as possible. Inexplicably, with President Biden, that assumption seems to be wrong.

I have read the judicial decision that ended the CDC’s transportation-based mask mandate, and I find myself ambivalent about its reasoning. There is nothing wrong with the judge who issued it being 35 years old, or with her having been appointed by President Trump, or with her having failed to satisfy the American Bar Association, and nor is there is anything inherently wrong with judges deciding whether the government has broken the law. On the merits, however, I could have gone either way. Interpretively and semantically, this was a tricky one. Had Biden’s order been upheld, it would have been legitimate. That it was struck down is legitimate, too. Sometimes, judging can be tough.

The policy, by contrast, was not a tricky one. The policy was remarkably stupid, and that President Biden decided to renew it not once, but twice, after it had clearly run its course, was a testament to his near total lack of political guile. Back in November, I asked, “If, tomorrow, you told a plane full of Americans that they no longer needed to wear their masks, how many do you think would still have them on by the time you’d hung the intercom back on its hook? Twenty? Ten? Three?” Last night, we got an answer to this question. So thrilled by the judge’s decision were America’s beleaguered airlines that most of them chose to broadcast the news mid-flight, where it was met by a supermajority of passengers with the sort of glee that has usually been reserved for the end of a war. Had he been smart, Joe Biden could have owned that glee. Instead, it came in spite of him, courtesy of a Republican-appointed judge, from — of all places — Florida.

For Biden: The Buck Stops … Somewhere Else Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/04/19/the_buck_stops__somewhere_else_147488.html

When my kids were little and something went wrong, they always pinned the blame on an absent friend. If there was a crayon drawing scrawled on the bedroom wall, they pointed to their buddy, Michael S. When an avalanche of toys came tumbling down the stairs, it must have been Michael’s fault. My boys seemed oblivious to the fact that Michael and his parents had been living in France for over a year.

Joe Biden’s explanation for America’s troubles is about as convincing as my 4-year-old twins’. Let’s consider a few of these self-inflicted troubles, beginning with the surge of illegal immigration.

Not that the administration dares call it illegal. They call it “irregular immigration” and, like all progressives, use the term “undocumented.” They simply forgot their documents. That Orwellian doublespeak is commonplace in the media, universities, and Washington.

The plain truth is that the Biden administration has exacerbated illegal immigration by overturning a series of successful, Trump-era policies on the southern border. The administration opened the door to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, leaving the Border Patrol overwhelmed and the Biden team without answers. The numbers are reaching historic highs. To make matters worse, the administration has just announced it will jettison Title 42, a public health policy used to curb mass immigration during the early days of the pandemic. So, even worse days are ahead.

Since the administration can’t find anyone to blame for this catastrophe, they simply ignore it. The mainstream media follows suit.

A new wave of left-wing advocates aims to take over district attorney’s offices in small cities. Thomas Hogan

https://www.city-journal.org/another-wave-of-progressive-prosecutors-may-be-coming

A growing number of San Francisco voters have decided that they’ve had enough of Chesa Boudin as their city’s top prosecutor. But across the country, inexperienced, progressive-minded attorneys are following the same playbook, deciding, like Boudin, who had not been a prosecutor before taking office as district attorney, that they’re qualified to operate the complex machinery of a prosecutor’s office. Their efforts threaten to destabilize even further the nation’s tottering criminal-justice system.

In 2019, Boudin replaced George Gascón, another progressive prosecutor, who had decamped to Los Angeles and now serves as district attorney there. The child of convicted murderers from the radical Weather Underground, Boudin had never served as a prosecutor, much less the chief prosecutor for a major city. Instead, he had worked as a translator for the Hugo Chavez administration in Venezuela before attending law school, clerking for a federal judge, and working as a public defender. Upon running for district attorney, Boudin told voters that he intended to stop prosecuting crimes and empty out the jails, respectable goals for a public defender but dubious policies for a DA. Once elected, Boudin delivered on his promises—and crime, homelessness, and disorder have exploded in San Francisco. Boudin now faces a recall election, funded by disgusted citizens and businesses.

Boudin’s tenure should have served as a warning to others that running a district attorney’s office might not be as simple as it looks. A chief prosecutor must be skilled at evaluating cases, reassuring citizens about public safety, coordinating with law enforcement, recruiting and training new prosecutors, handling a budget, interacting with judges, and a million-and-one other actions that affect urban crime. These skills take time to learn and refine.

Mom of J6 Political Prisoner: ‘We Are Half Alive’ In its myopic mission to punish political dissidents, the Justice Department and D.C courts are destroying the basic tenets of American jurisprudence and liberty. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/18/mom-of-j6-political-prisoner-we-are-half-alive/

Ethan Nordean is entering his 13th month of captivity as a political prisoner in the United States of America.

Arrested in his home state of Washington last February on nonviolent charges related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, Nordean, 31, has spent the past year in jail, mostly in solitary confinement. He hasn’t held his young daughter or hugged his wife and parents for months.

In the eyes of the Biden regime—on a destructive crusade to exact revenge against supporters of Donald Trump—Nordean is a threat to the country, an alleged “domestic violent extremist,” i.e., terrorist, as a member of the Proud Boys. That, of course, is not the group that burned, looted, and actually terrorized thousands of American communities throughout 2020, responsible for at least two dozen deaths and $2 billion in property damages.

Nordean’s real crime in Joe Biden’s America was to support Donald Trump in the 2020 election. During an exchange last year at a congressional hearing between FBI Director Christopher Wray and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Wray suggested Nordean was among the “most dangerous, most serious” January 6 criminal cases.

So, what exactly did Nordean do that so alarmed Wray? Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, he made plans to travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in a political protest—something that was not considered a crime before January 6, 2021. Nordean and other members of the Proud Boys peacefully assembled near the Washington Monument in the morning and then walked toward Capitol Hill.

When some members of the Proud Boys and at least two FBI informants with the group physically breached a police line around 1 p.m. on January 6, Nordean was not among them.

How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone’s Holy Sites, Including Their Own by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18436/palestinians-desecrate-holy-sites

“We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah.” – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, MEMRI, September 16, 2015.

The Jews who have been peacefully touring the Temple Mount area in the past few years have never even set foot inside the Aqsa Mosque or on the nearby Dome of the Rock. The Jewish visitors do not go there to assault or humiliate Muslims. They go there as part of organized tours that are coordinated with the Israeli authorities.

Blinken’s remarks show that he considers the construction of new homes for Jews more dangerous than the murder of Israelis on the streets of Israeli cities.

This is all happening while the Biden administration airily disregards endless Palestinian blood libels and vicious incitement against both Israel and the Jews.

Prominently, Blinken did not threaten to suspend US financial aid to the Palestinians over the payments to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews and the ongoing incitement to attack Israelis.

Take note: as long as Secretary Blinken considers the construction of apartments for Jews a greater threat than shooting and stabbing Israeli men and women at shopping malls and bars, the Palestinians will not cease their blood payments and murderous incitement.

Unless the US administration makes it unmistakably clear that the Palestinians will pay dearly for continuing to reward terrorists and their families, the Palestinians will not even slow down either desecrating holy sites or committing their terror attacks.

The Palestinians have once again been caught lying to the world by claiming that Jews are “desecrating” the Islamic holy sites, in particular the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

If anyone is desecrating the mosque and other holy sites it is the Palestinians themselves.

The national fight for survival is not over By Matt Rowe

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_national_fight_for_survival_is_not_over.html

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an essay for American Thinker: They escaped totalitarianism twice, only to see it again in America. I described how badly our Leftist neighbors responded to my father-in-law’s support for President Trump in the 2020 election. I described how vandals stole his political signs several times but the gist of the article was about two main points.

First, I told how my father-in-law had survived both the Nazis and the Soviets in Poland during WW2, emigrated to Argentina as a kid, and then survived the dictatorship in that country. In Argentina, he had been forced to hide his college textbooks in the backyard for fear of government agents. My wife recalls the young next-door neighbors being dragged out of the house and shot in the street, ostensibly for being socialist, but it was just as likely that they simply did not want to live in a dictatorship.

The second point was that Carmel, Indiana, a wealthy bedroom community of Indianapolis, and a thriving community in its own right, was beginning to show the same initial signs of social intolerance fomented by the Nazis, the Soviets, and Argentina’s dictators. Gina Carano warned about letting this happen in the US on her social media and was fired from Disney for her trouble.

Currently, my 82-year-old father-in-law displays in his front yard a pro-life sign and a “Facts Are Facts” sign (that I created). He also flies his US Flag upside down as a sign that he believes that the “greatest country on Earth” is in serious distress. Because we have cleverly hidden cameras (and some not so hidden), the signs have not yet been molested.

Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution’ By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/wannsee_the_road_to_the_final_solution.html

They met on January 20, 1942, at a luxury villa on park-like grounds overlooking Lake Wannsee, a recreation site a half-hour’s drive from Berlin. Built by a wealthy industrialist, the villa was now held by an SS (Schutzstaffel) foundation. They were 15 top officials of the Nazi state – among them were nine lawyers and eight with doctorates. In that idyllic setting, in a meeting that lasted 90 minutes, they decided the “Jewish question”—how to deport 11 million people to labor camps and kill any who survived. If they differed, it was on the details. Never on the intent—mass murder.

Holocaust expert Peter Longerich’s illuminating book Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution begins by describing the meeting on that wintry day. The description brings out Nazi cynicism and cold-bloodedness as they convened at a pleasure spot to plan genocide. Longerich draws on the only remaining record of the meeting: the “minutes” prepared and distributed by Adolph Eichmann with instructions for destruction after review. One minister disobeyed, and the U.S. Army discovered his copy in 1945. The document summarizes the main lines of discussion and the decisions reached; it estimates Jewish populations in 30 countries, sets out specific territories where fit Jews should be made to work in labor gangs subjected to “natural wastage”; and says survivors would be disposed of in an unspecified manner.

The participants at the Wannsee Conference, called by Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, broadly represented all facets of the Reich. They did not actually initiate the Holocaust; it had already been haphazardly set in motion by disparate factions of the Nazi machinery. What they achieved was consensus. Those horrified by plans for exterminating Jews were pressured into compliance as evidence of their commitment to the Nazi goal of purifying the German volk.

Reichstag president Hermann Göring had made Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Head Office (RHSA), directly responsible for the “final solution.” But even before the Wannsee Conference, deportations had begun at Fuhrer Adolf Hitler’s behest in October 1941. The first extermination camps had already been built. Agencies of the Reich were carrying out uncoordinated campaigns of mass murder and competing to propose radical solutions. The conference defined “Jewishness” for the Nazis’ base purposes, decided on what to do with half-Jews, and created an RHSA-led master plan for eliminating Jews. It channeled intention into a systematic extermination program.