Republican News

This post was originally published on this site

There is a significant constituency for socialized medicine in the United States, and it seems like every progressive will tell you why it is perfectly understandable that one of their own would decide to shoot a health insurance CEO in the back. 

After all, there are people who are not getting exactly what they want at the exact time they want it. 

I’m not naive enough to think that our healthcare system is perfect–it is, in fact, a convoluted mess slapped together over the past 75 years and in desperate need of reform. I’m not even sure how we could get from here to a rationally designed system that combines free-market principles and affordable insurance, given how screwed up things are. 

But be careful what you wish for, commies, because socialized medicine is in almost all ways much worse. 

Woman waits 6 years for knee replacement. Gets surgery but has complication. Has to wait 8 days for follow-up procedure because there are no beds. Because of delay, she now needs amputation.

Can we stop defending Canada’s atrocious healthcare system?https://t.co/fgbbpzumei

— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) December 17, 2024

Ask any Brit what they think of the National Health Service, and they will give you a long list of horror stories, but then robotically intone their love of the NHS as an idea. They are quite proud of it as an idea, but the reality of it is almost unbearable. Few Americans would tolerate what is quite normal in Great Britain. 

Canada, though, is arguably worse since their solution to limited resources is to offer to murder you, or in this case, to chop your limbs off once they torture you with poor care. 

The story of Roseanne Milburn is bad enough to make you burn with rage, but it is not shocking at all in the context of how Canada rations care. In the US, we are used to having access to almost unlimited resources dedicated to providing healthcare, and that is one of the reasons why we are so shocked when anything is denied. Everything is expensive, pricing is opaque, insurance companies are maddening to deal with, but when push comes to shove we tend to get the care we need (or more) when we need it. 

My wife, for instance, had pain in her hip and got it checked out. The doctor said she should get her hip replaced, although she could do it now or wait until it got worse. It was up to her. She decided to go for the replacement, got a newer procedure that was minimally invasive within a few weeks and was back on her feet almost immediately. 

Smooth as silk, for the most part. We had a deductible, of course, but we always met it, and more, so the procedure cost us, net, almost nothing. 

In Canada Ms. Milburn needed a knee replaced, and she was placed on a waiting list. Six years later, she got it, but it didn’t go so well. Today, she is down one leg. 

A Manitoba woman had her right leg amputated after complications following a knee replacement surgery two months earlier.

Roseanne Milburn, 61, went ahead with the scheduled amputation last Friday, after weeks of complications stemming from a post-surgery infection.

In late November, a surgeon at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre began removing dead tissue from her right knee, with the intention of stitching her up later that day after she was seen by an orthopedic surgeon at Concordia Hospital.

She was sent to Concordia, but couldn’t be transferred back to HSC because there wasn’t a bed available for the specialist to finish the procedure. Instead, she spent eight days languishing at Concordia with a painful open wound.

Manitoba woman set to lose right leg after languishing in hospital bed with open wound

Once she finally got to HSC, Milburn went under the knife for another infection, but due to the long delay in stitching up the wound, she said she was told her leg wasn’t salvageable.

Eight days with an open wound. Eight days. So long that the leg became necrotic and had to be removed. 

At least she got the amputation at the cut-rate or for free. 

The fact is that every good we consume is a limited resource, including healthcare. It gets rationed somehow, and under socialized systems, the rationing mechanism isn’t price but time and quality. Nothing is for free. 

With all the problems with our healthcare system in the United States, we have one big saving grace: the country is extremely wealthy because we have a (mostly) free market economy. That allows us to afford to consume enormous amounts of medical care, even though that care is provided extremely inefficiently. The system is lubricated by enormous amounts of money. We spend 17% of our enormous GDP on healthcare, and even under Joe Biden, our GDP is growing faster than our peer economies by a mile. 

In fact, one of the reasons why our healthcare is so expensive is that we essentially subsidize the rest of the world–we fund the innovation through high prices, while other countries buy the pharmaceuticals and medical devices at cut rates. 

Rube Goldberg couldn’t have designed a system as ridiculous as ours, but for all its flaws, it works pretty well. Despite our uncompetitive health statistics (many of these are not comparing apples to apples, but that is another issue), the fact is that almost every metric where we underperform other countries comes down to lifestyle choices, not the failure of medical care. 

For instance, the United States has one of the highest incidence rates of cancer in the world but one of the best survival rates as well. The first is likely due to higher diagnosis rates and poor lifestyle choices, and the latter is due to excellent treatment. 

In other words, we give ourselves more disease, and medical care helps us survive despite that fact. 

The truth is that Americans would go crazy dealing with most systems of socialized medicine in most countries. There may be a country or two where government-provided healthcare works for idiosyncratic reasons (I am not a healthcare public policy expert), but peer countries look pretty bad once you dig into the data. 

In the modern world, you couldn’t design a 100% private healthcare system that would pass political muster, but Singapore has a system that is mostly free-market and is top of the pile on health outcomes. 

I don’t know enough about it to endorse that system, and even if it were ideal, I see no way to get from here to there in my lifetime. 

But the evidence is clear: the socialized systems that lefties drool over are disasters. 

This post was originally published on this site

Closing the tabs in the context of tabs that close as we tab … er …

Are Democrats coconut-pilled? Some want to see Kamala Harris run again.

Senior Democrats aren’t ruling out Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate for 2028. But not all of them are fully endorsing the idea, either.

Ed: They’re all playing nice at the moment, mainly because they know this is a self-solving problem. Harris is so inept that even if she did run for the nomination, and even if she raised a bunch of money for it (a big if after blowing through $1.5B), she’d lose badly. There’s almost no need to get in front of the issue at this stage. But the Politico headline about being ‘coconut-pilled’ is a keeper!

===

Audience starts laughing when Harris asks young people to remember “the context in which you exist.”

“Yeah, I did that,” she replies laughing. “Uh huh.” pic.twitter.com/pALyWKnKPJ

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) December 17, 2024

Ed: Like I said …

===

“According to a new report, Vice President Kamala Harris believes that if she runs for president again in 2028, she would face a competitive Democratic primary process,” Meyers said on “Late Night” Tuesday.

“Not to mention an awkward one,” he added, showing a mocked-up picture of President Joe Biden in front of a “Biden 2028″ podium.

Ed: It’s a light-hearted dig, but any ridicule of Harris by late-night shows even now seems worth noting. 

===

Kamala says her humiliating defeat is just an “obstacle” as she stares down unemployment on January 20. pic.twitter.com/QHoqEVq3eh

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 17, 2024

Ed: In fairness, rolling up her sleeves could mean something other than running for another office. It’s difficult to figure out any other path for her, though, except NGO activism — and that requires executive competence, too. 

===

“I find it hard to believe that she could build support. The stories — it’s just, it’s so disappointing to see our colleagues, just as they did during the four years of the Biden administration, failing to cover the truth right before our eyes,” [Mark] Halperin said. “Is her poor performance the only reason she didn’t win? No, but it’s right up there … I think both [President] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have escaped a lot of the blame that falls to them, and that’s not just my view, but the view of a lot of Democrats — donors and members of Congress, etc.”

Ed: The reference to competition isn’t just about votes. It’s also about finding financial and political support. No one wants to rule out Harris at the moment, but Halperin’s correct. After watching her campaign so incompetently and waste so much money in such a short period of time, potential donors and allies will want to invest more wisely in future campaigns where other choices exist. That applies to the gubernatorial contest in California too, as Halperin goes on to state.

===

The only person in the room that doesn’t know Kamala Harris isn’t running in 2028 is Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/lUmeSq1vJH

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) December 16, 2024

Ed: In 50 seconds, Kamala Harris manages to say … nothing at all. Clearly she works hard at her power to say nothing, and on her ability to say nothing. 

===

CNN Political Commentator Karen Finney:

“[Kamala Harris] should run for president again if she believes she has the energy to do it.”

Yes please! Run again, Kamala! pic.twitter.com/jR6QDRKQtQ

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 18, 2024

===

I propose that Harris shift her gaze away from the White House and focus on a run for California governor — or some other kind of public service. Harris was undoubtedly dealt a bad hand in the 2024 election. But she is also exactly the wrong kind of figure to try to lead the party going forward in an era of populism and rapidly shifting coalitions. …

Yet despite her manifest intelligence and poise, Harris revealed few instincts for how to climb out of that hole. In an election in which she was running to succeed an unpopular president, she struggled to articulate what, if anything, she would do differently as president. The defining theme of the campaign was Americans’ negative feelings about the economy — that, despite cooling inflation, everything still felt too expensive. But Harris lacked a clear economic message that reflected an understanding of the cost-of-living crisis.

Ed: It’s not that she lacked the message. It’s that she copy-pasted Joe Biden’s message while simultaneously trying to distance herself from it without any clue as to what else to offer. It was literally the most important issue in this election, and Harris not only didn’t have any instincts for it, she had no grasp of the issue at all. And when you lose MSNBC ….

===

Damm, it looks like Kamala is back again to fight, to tell us what kind of car we need to drive.

How do the most leftist politicians are all from California?

Kamala is coming back to fight in 2028. Good grief, more word salad. pic.twitter.com/gV6b9iitO3

— Juliana@InspiredCafe2023🦩 (@ICafe2023) December 18, 2024

This post was originally published on this site

Writing for the Free Press, Ruy Teixeira makes the case that despite the dismal results of the 2024 election, democrats are in deep denial about what went wrong and what they need to do to fix it. As is usually true, he makes a very convincing case.

In the wake of the Democrats’ drubbing at the hands of Donald Trump and the GOP, you’d assume the party would be all-in on a fundamental rethink, starting with some serious soul-searching on how the party came to be so out of sync with the majority of America on key cultural questions…

Well, if the six weeks since the election is anything to go by, you’d be wrong. Instead, much of the party is maneuvering to change as little as possible on the cultural front. Why? Because many of today’s Democrats are culture denialists. 

I’ve previously pointed out evidence that the Democrats’ stance on gender ideology and immigration hurt the party at the polls. But of course the left has been in denial about all of this. Their solution after any loss is to move further left. And what Teixeira sees happening now is Democrats refusing to acknowledge they need to move back to the center.

Many senior figures on the party’s left have skipped discussions of cultural issues altogether, instead publishing progressive policy wish lists. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont thinks Democrats should talk more about billionaires. Rep. Ro Khanna is betting on a “New Economic Deal” that would emphasize high-paying jobs for the middle class. Senator Chris Murphy thinks the key to a Democratic revival is advocating for the breakup of corporate power. Other Democrats suggest a relentless focus on “kitchen-table” issues. (Ah, what would Democrats do without that fabled kitchen table?) The general idea is that talking more about economic issues, typically in a populist vein, will win back the working class and obviate the need to change anything else…

The outgoing DNC chair takes things even further. Since the election, Jaime Harrison has strenuously resisted the idea Democrats should abandon “identity politics,” saying they represent how “people of color” see Democrats fighting for them. Invoking his status as a black man, he remarked: “That is my identity. . . . it is not politics. It is my life. And the people that I need in the party, that I need to stand up for me, have to recognize that. You cannot run away from that.” In other words, Democrats should double down on so-called culture war issues like race and gender that are so off-putting to voters. This is a strange recommendation since, as Democrats have become ever more associated with identity politics, they have been doing ever more poorly among non-white voters, especially non-white working-class voters. Their advantage among the latter group has declined by more than half since 2012.

They are doubling down on stupid, which is great news for Republicans. As Teixeira correctly points out, most people don’t support mandatory DEI statements or the quasi-legal employment discrimination that comes with them. Most people don’t support teaching the gender unicorn to 1st graders and they don’t support putting biological men in women’s prisons or letting them compete against women athletes. Most people don’t support allowing schools to hide a child’s social transition from parents. And most people don’t support open borders or the gaming of the immigration system or spending billions of dollars housing migrants who will never be asked to leave the country no matter what an impotent immigration court ultimately decides about their legal right to be here.

Teixeira concludes that until they learn from their mistakes, Democrats are doomed to repeat them. As of now they don’t seem to have learned much. And if past performance is any guide, they are likely to become more extreme and insistent about these fringe issues as Trump’s 2nd term continues, not less so.

This post was originally published on this site

This story is nuts, to the point that I would be suspicious if it wasn’t being reported everywhere this afternoon. Brian Williams is the LA Deputy Mayor in charge of public safety. Today the FBI raided his house because he is the main suspect in a bomb threat against City Hall made earlier this year.

Agents searched the home of the deputy mayor, Brian Williams, on Tuesday. Mr. Williams, who was appointed by Mayor Karen Bass last year to oversee public safety, was immediately placed on administrative leave, the mayor’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The LAPD decided it couldn’t very well investigate its own boss so they handed the matter over to the FBI.

“Earlier this year the LAPD responded to a bomb threat made against Los Angeles City Hall,” the department’s statement said. “Our initial investigation revealed that the source of the threat was likely from Brian Williams, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety. Due to the Department’s working relationship with Mr. Williams, the investigation was referred to the FBI. The FBI remains the investigating agency.”

Williams was immediately placed on leave. Here’s the statement released by the mayor’s office.

NEW: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ office says they’ve placed Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian Williams on leave after they were notified the FBI raided his home yesterday in connection to a bomb threat he allegedly made against city hall earlier this year. Photo: @latimes pic.twitter.com/NY6mIcKXjg

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) December 18, 2024

The LA Times found a neighbor who doesn’t believe this could be true.

Peggy Names, who lives next door to Williams’ home in Pasadena, expressed shock about the investigation.

“He’s not capable of that. It’s ridiculous. They must have the wrong Brian Williams, I’m positive,” she said. “They are a wonderful family, they go to church every Sunday, they’re upstanding pillars of the community, and we’ve enjoyed having them as our neighbors for over 20 years.”

When he was appointed last year, Williams was given oversight of “the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the Port of Los Angeles Police, the Los Angeles World Airport Police, and the Emergency Management Department.” That’s quite a portfolio for a guy suspected of a crime, even if it’s just a misdemeanor in California.

It’s not clear exactly when this bomb threat took place. I’ve seen one tweet suggesting it was 3 months ago but none of the stories about it published by major outlets are specific. In any case, if the LAPD determined he was likely the source of the threat right away, why is he only being suspended now? The mayor’s office must have known. Were they hoping this would all blow over? Something seems fishy here. Maybe there’s a good explanation but a political cover up doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility either.

This post was originally published on this site

OMG. What a crap sammich.

Ed’s already gone through the appalling nerve of Dicky Durbin trying to boost his pay like he was a UAW or UPS worker or something.

I hate to break it to you, Senator – but there is sympathy in America when the unions start squawking. Those guys WORK, Durbin.

As I know, my intellectual heavy-weight counterparts are already chewing this thing up (See? I can be nice to David), so I thought I’d just bring the stenographer’s version of the bull*coughs*it that’s in this abomination.

So, an X friend of mine (not ‘ex’ – we still talk!) who had his own site keeping track of government waste fraud and abuse documenting bull*coughs*it contract awards long before DOGE was a gleam in anyone’s eye (RandoLand) just found a few fun infringements.

One means you go to jail for making naughty pictures even if they’re meant as parody (quibble about the meaning of ‘consent’ later) and five more years of funding for electric buses!

WEEEEEE!

That’s SO what we voted for.

Oh we’re also extending the scam electric bus program that typically costs over a million dollars for each bus.

Another five years of that. Thanks GOP! pic.twitter.com/MwG03ns01y

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) December 18, 2024

And who needs POTATUS’ pardons when Congress blocks itself from issuing subpoenas?!

YAY! MY FAVORITE!

Shifty Schiff, the whole J6 committee, and co-conspirators get Trump-proofed!

HOLY SH*T: Buried Deep within the CR, Congress is allowed to block subpoenas for “House Data”

THIS INCLUDES EMAILS. Which means this could prevent investigations into the J6 Committee

ABSOLUTELY NOT, MAKE THIS VIRAL ON 𝕏 pic.twitter.com/KsThs9TqAm

— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) December 18, 2024

But wait! There’s more. Besides the pay raise Ed raked Dicky over the coals for, now they also don’t have to get their health insurance off the Obamacare exchanges they make the rest of us schlubs use. Isn’t that neat-o?

They can go back to being the special flowers they always thought they were.

YAY! MY FAVORITE!

So I see the CR allows members of Congress to get off the Obamacare exchanges! Rules for thee… pic.twitter.com/AxbtUyVNVL

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 18, 2024

And all that COVID authoritarian stuff we demanded we never, EH-VAH wanted to see again because it was un Gott danged American?

Fooled.

You.

The bill makes it all even biggerer and betterer.

The CR/Omnibus also expands the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness and Response Act.

This allows for vaccine and mask mandates, vaccine passports, intentional emergency powers, gain of function research.

It also created BARDA, the agencies responsible for mRNA/GOF research. pic.twitter.com/TZU3gnzivH

— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) December 18, 2024

I mean, it goes on and on and gobsmackingly on.

But, for once, it looks as if the hotheads may prevail over the critters who came up with this.

Elon and Vivek (who is wading through every page and line of this abomination) have both come out hard against it and favor a shutdown if that’s what it takes. That, in turn, upset the usual go along to get along congressional caucus.

🚨BREAKING: Republicans are complaining that Elon’s crusade against the CR bill is causing bleeding support amongst House Republicans.

Oh no…somebody stop him… 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/p5Li3UmKZY

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 18, 2024

But the poison pills – which are throughout – are so completely contrary to the wishes of the voters that normally complacent GOP members of Congress are starting to grow a pair and raise the Jolly Roger.

Rep. Kat Cammack R-FL says the CR+ deal is ‘doing incredible damage’ within House GOP ranks. pic.twitter.com/LGiH5VGINM

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) December 18, 2024

Oh, she’s a pirate now!

I know it’s hard to imagine, but knives are now out for Speaker Mike Johnson, where once a cross word was never heard before. 

Moderates see the entire exercise as a betrayal. It’s like a Democratic wet dream come true, and they want nothing to do with it.

GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz Reveals Speaker Johnson Didn’t Even Talk to Moderate Republicans Before Pushing CR

“Listen, we’re a divided government, but we don’t have to be ruled by Democrats. Speaker Johnson didn’t even talk to moderate Republicans, not just to conservatives. He… pic.twitter.com/0nFv74mbGb

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) December 18, 2024

…”Listen, we’re a divided government, but we don’t have to be ruled by Democrats. Speaker Johnson didn’t even talk to moderate Republicans, not just to conservatives. He usually doesn’t even care to hear us. You know, that’s unfortunate.” 

“He just made the deal, you know, with Democrats, put a bunch of slush funds, what they wanted, put little things that maybe he can try to push some Republicans to vote and try to sell it as a victory, which is really another, you know, Christmas present to Chuck Schumer. And that’s what was expected by Republicans, and he’s been dishonest in this.” 

“I think at some point enough is enough, and if we don’t start governing, the country is on a calamity course. So I hope next Congress will grow the backbone and start dealing with the swamp, because fiscally, the country is really in huge, huge trouble.” 

“The failure of this leadership to listen to every voice within the party, not just the extremes but the moderates who represent a significant portion of the population, is disheartening. Decisions are being made without transparency or accountability, fueling frustration and distrust.” 

“While certain factions within the government celebrate these deals as victories, they fail to recognize the long-term repercussions on the nation’s stability and financial health.”…

 Lots of ‘nopes, I’m out‘ on X.

I was elected to represent the people of SC-05 and fight for the American people.

We were promised a CLEAN CR and that’s what the American people deserve.

I’d rather shut the government down before considering this CRomni… pic.twitter.com/QcinMEzUgW

— Rep. Ralph Norman (@RepRalphNorman) December 18, 2024

Pressure is building big time on Johnson to drop the damn thing like the flaming bag of dog poo it is and get done what should have happened in the first place.

A clean CR.

NEW: Speaker Johnson is now considering a “plan B” for his spending bill after receiving fierce backlash from Elon Musk on X, according to Politico.

Good.

According to the outlet, Johnson is considering producing a “clean CR” and dealing with the other issues later on when… pic.twitter.com/CKcFOn4A9o

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 18, 2024

…According to the outlet, Johnson is considering producing a “clean CR” and dealing with the other issues later on when Trump is in office. 

“That would mean dropping disaster aid, $30 billion for farmers, and a one-year extension of the farm bill, among other items, at least for now,” Politico reported. 

Musk previously said he would “fight tooth and nail” to make sure the government is using taxpayer money the right way. 

He wasn’t kidding.

I lurves me the squirm from the regulars on the Hill. I don’t know that they’ve ever been THIS uncomfortable in their political lives.

House Republicans say that 𝕏 and Elon Musk had a huge impact on the CR Bill vote.

We the People don’t want ‘business as usual’ anymore

We have Trump a mandate, either tow the line or get out of the way.

Otherwise prepare to lose your job! pic.twitter.com/moWeiizSZz

— Diligent Denizen 🇺🇸 (@DiligentDenizen) December 18, 2024

The speaker had better get moving on an acceptable alternative because Trump and Vance just cut the legs out from under him. 

Joint statement from Trump & Vance on the CR: pic.twitter.com/5qTutyVcUK

— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) December 18, 2024

IF DEMOCRATS WANT TO SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN, CALL THEIR BLUFF

Yo, ho, ho.

That’s the answer we voted for.

And poof!

Before local press tries to spin this, watch this video. We will be getting disaster aid but the current rendition of the CR is being pulled from the floor. It’s a bad deal for America. Was terrible to try to put on the floor in the first place. pic.twitter.com/aQKhVgysju

— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) December 18, 2024

YO, HO, HO

This post was originally published on this site

For those of us who have been fighting in the trenches of the culture war, the past few weeks have buoyed our spirits and even sparked optimism that the woke mind virus pandemic is coming to an end. 

Corporations and universities are axing their DEI departments–although I will be curious to see whether they follow through on their promises or just rename and rebrand their efforts–and it is now cool again to speak your mind in most circles. 

It’s like we can breathe again. 

One great sign of this cultural shift is that Disney–yes THAT Disney–has moved away from Queering all the content and has even deleted a scene in an upcoming series that promoted Alphabet ideology. 

Vibes have shifted. https://t.co/XKi9mrL3IY

— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) December 17, 2024

It’s impossible to overstate how significant a shift that is. Despite making noises about pulling back from fighting the culture wars after it got its butt kicked by Ron DeSantis a couple of years ago, the company’s actual behavior didn’t change that much. They simply quit talking so much about Alphabet issues while they kept pouring out the content that outraged so many parents. 

Pixar‘s new animated series Win or Lose, set for a 2025 premiere on Disney+, will no longer include a transgender storyline.

Disney has eliminated “a few lines of dialogue” from an episode that references a character’s gender identity, we’ve learned.

Disney released a statement to Deadline confirming the change, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, saying that  “when it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

Disney’s acknowledgment that parents, not woke activists who use their positions to become evangelists for Queer ideology, should be discussing these issues with their parents is a huge acknowledgment that the company lost its way. 

In some ways, more importantly, it is Disney’s executives taking back their company from the generation of woke activists who hijacked the power of Disney to spread neo-Marxist ideology of all kinds, beyond Alphabet ideology. 

NEW: Disney production coordinator Allen March, who says his team is committed to “exploring queer stories” and promoting “trans,” “bisexual,” and “gender nonconforming” characters, says kids are “getting all this information from the media” and “there’s a lot of power to that.” pic.twitter.com/rgxXgcIEwA

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 31, 2022

NEW: Disney corporate president Karey Burke, the “mother of two queer children,” says the company has been “targeting Gen Z and millennials” with LGBTQIA+ “inclusion” content. Her son told her that “Gen Z is 30-40% queerer” and that Disney “better get with it.” pic.twitter.com/CYYD7NqKZg

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 7, 2022

Many of these major corporations adopted wokeness not so much because the CEOs wanted to, although some did, but because they were getting outside pressure from ESG activists and inside pressure from their own employees, of whom they had become afraid. 

NEW: Disney corporate president Karey Burke, the “mother of two queer children,” says the company has been “targeting Gen Z and millennials” with LGBTQIA+ “inclusion” content. Her son told her that “Gen Z is 30-40% queerer” and that Disney “better get with it.” pic.twitter.com/CYYD7NqKZg

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 7, 2022

The anti-woke consumer movement has been a force all its own, though. While the ESG pressure came from financial institutions like Blackrock, access to capital is only one component of the financial success of a corporation. Companies need customers even more than they need outside capital–after all, those investments they make are all about the RETURN on capital, and if your return on capital is small, then it really doesn’t matter that Blackrock is willing to give it to you. 

I wonder how Disney+ is doing? … pic.twitter.com/qLaoWQX22a

— Theo Jordan (@Theo_TJ_Jordan) February 5, 2023

Disney had gone so far to the left that the audience was getting left behind. The success of the company ultimately depends on parents wanting their kids to watch Disney products and go to Disney parks, and in recent years, this has been a struggle. 

This Disney Executive producer candidly explains her agenda is to insert “queerness” into each show. pic.twitter.com/BlpIGdmq2c

— David Vance (@DVATW) February 6, 2023

It’s easy to overstate how many parents have paid enough attention to these matters, but cultural wins are won on the margins. It’s not like parents were demanding that Disney queer their content–it was a fringe group that accomplished a huge win–so I feel confident that we culture warriors can claim credit. 

Not long after causing waves with the decision to pull a completed episode of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur featuring a transgender character, Disney animation has suffered another backslide in queer representation.https://t.co/TCAplQPMNL pic.twitter.com/1IVUT3y498

— Animation Magazine (@animag) December 18, 2024

Parents shouldn’t HAVE to fight these fights in the first place, and even ones who sigh in disgust at the injecting of Alphabet ideology into kids’ content are less likely that we would prefer to gin up the energy to fight these battles. The same is true for parents fighting Alphabet ideology in the schools. Too few parents join Moms for Liberty, for example, but then again, Moms for Liberty is winning some major battles. 

That’s why it is important for those of us who are paying close attention to get off our keisters and fight, or support those who are on the front lines. They are winning the battle for the culture. 

Total & complete victory for @GovRonDeSantis over @disney. Woke Disney bends the knee, removes trans character from animated series says they recognize parents would “prefer to discuss certain subjects on their own terms and timeline.” This is what the Florida law said! Huge win. pic.twitter.com/f4ZgPaLjWo

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 18, 2024

They are the superheroes saving society. 

Interesting convo on corporate America ending DEI programs. My comment on @cnn: vast majority of Americans want to rise and fall based on talent and hard work, not on forced racial quotas. pic.twitter.com/L1J9lo34kU

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) December 18, 2024

This post was originally published on this site

Don’t you just hate when you get to the end of a whodunit only to find out that the most obvious suspect turned out to be the villain? When it does indeed turn out to be the butler who did it all along?

Prepare thusly for the New York Times’ report on Disney’s decision to pay $16 million and throw in the towel on Donald Trump’s defamation suit. Brooke Barnes dispels the notion that this has to do with meta-strategy for the next four years or a desire to bend the knee to Trump. Instead, the deciding factor was “the butler” we all suspected, and the biggest clue was also the most accurate one:

On Friday, Judge Altonaga dealt Disney another setback. She rejected requests to delay the case and ordered near-immediate depositions for Mr. Trump and Mr. Stephanopoulos. Moreover, Disney was also told to turn over “all remaining documents” related to the case — including pertinent emails and text messages sent by and to Mr. Stephanopoulos — by Sunday.

Disney responded by opening settlement talks. By Friday night, the two sides had reached a deal. The company agreed to donate $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum. Mr. Stephanopoulos and ABC News published a statement saying they “regret” remarks made about Mr. Trump during the March broadcast. The news network also agreed to pay Mr. Trump an additional $1 million in legal fees.

Aha! It was Discovery in the Library with the Lead Pipe! Once Disney discovered that ABC would have to open its books, and especially its internal communications, they leapt into action. It only took hours for them to come up with a cash offer to get Trump to settle. That has to be some sort of record in media-defamation litigation — and it strongly suggests that the $16 million and “regret” statement would do a lot less damage to Disney than they would have suffered with the release of those communications.

As Wilford Brimley drily noted in Absence of Malice: “Wonderful thing, subpoenas.” That was from Columbia Pictures, of course, now a division of Disney rival Sony Pictures. Ironically, if there had been an absence of malice in Stephanopoulos’ remarks, Disney would be $16 million richer. The rush to settle indicates a large level of discoverable malice lurked within those communications.

But wait! There’s more! Discovery had an accomplice, as it turns out, although the accomplice is also no surprise at all. Add in Sullivan in the Hallway with a dagger aimed at the heart of the entire media industry:

In the worst-cast scenario, Disney concluded, fighting the case could lead to the Supreme Court and become a vehicle for Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the landmark First Amendment decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. That 1964 ruling, as well as a handful of subsequent cases, made it much harder for public figures like Mr. Trump to win libel lawsuits.

Disney’s legal team, headed by Mr. Gutierrez, ultimately decided that settling, even with the inevitable negative headlines, was the best outcome — that $16 million was a small price to pay for resolving a tricky case.

Disney’s attorneys must have read recent dissents from Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch about the need to reverse the Sullivan doctrine on defamation. That in itself may have a salutary impact on media reporting, which until very recently) has been filled with dishonest impunity regarding Trump and other Republicans. These media companies can’t afford to allow the Supreme Court an opportunity to revisit Sullivan and remove their “actual malice” hyper-defense against defamation regarding “public persons,” even when those people are government officials. 

This is also amusing, given the evolution of Disney on its own home turf:

The company was concerned that a jury in Florida — a deep-red state that Mr. Trump carried by 13 points in the election last month — would side with the president-elect and potentially award him a sizable sum exceeding what it would cost to settle.

Not so very long ago at all, Disney might have fought hard to get a Florida jury involved in a defamation lawsuit. They used to own Florida in terms of public relations, at least until Bob Iger et al decided to go woke and go political against parents and Republicans in the state. They made Ron DeSantis an enemy and ended up paying a very high cost for it, both in terms of financial cost and in public affection in Florida and elsewhere. 

The fact that Iger now has to fear Florida jury pools explains a lot not just about this settlement but also Disney’s other moves, including the one that David wrote about earlier today. The world is healing, indeed. Now let’s see if Iger and other media outlets take the real lesson from this episode and start weeding out political activists from the ranks of “reporters” and news hosts — an industry trend that is actually the real villain in this case. 

This post was originally published on this site

When Luigi Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania, I had a look at his social media account and was struck that it did not appear to be what I expected. On the contrary, he seemed to be something of a moderate.

Luigi Mangione was tweeting Jonathan Haidt, Tim Urban, Thiel, pro-nuclear content, complaining about DEI.

HIs politics seem moderate and sensible.

Maybe the CEO guy just stole his girlfriend? She left him because he was wasting his time on AI safety instead of making money. pic.twitter.com/DspLG2LFsG

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 9, 2024

Of course it’s not as simple as that. Mangione had also written a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto in which he seemed to endorse political violence. But his most glowing review on GoodReads was reserved for a book by author Tim Urban. Urban’s most recent book is titled “What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies.” Here’s a bit of the blurb for it.

What’s Our Problem? is a deep and expansive analysis of our modern times, in the classic style of Wait But Why, packed with original concepts, sticky metaphors, and 300 drawings. The book provides an entirely new framework and language for thinking and talking about today’s complex world. Instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis, which is all about what we think, the book introduces a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups.

Mangione read the book and was a huge fan.

I believe this book will go down in history as the most important philosophical text of the early 21st century https://t.co/Ez189GgLm4

— Luigi Mangione (@PepMangione) January 24, 2024

Today the NY Times published an interview with Urban asking him what it was like to have such a big fan commit such a notorious murder.

Tim Urban: Honestly, confusion and sadness. Confusion about how someone who really likes my stuff could also be a person who does this.

If I imagine the Venn diagram circles of “people who not only like my stuff but evangelize about it” and “those who not just support political assassination but do it themselves” … if he is in fact guilty, he might be the only person in the overlap. And what that tells me is that, most likely, he had a really bad mental health break of some kind.

It’s not clear what happened to Mangione but we do know that he disappeared off the radar weeks before the shooting. His mother had even made a missing person’s report to the police. There are also reports that he had back surgery which left him in constant pain, though UnitedHealth was not his insurance company.

But there was a surprise midway through the interview. It turns out that Mangione had written to Urban before the murder to praise him for the book and one particular quote that he loved. But Urban noticed that he got the quote wrong.

He emailed me personally. …

What did he say?

He said he’s a big fan of the blog. He’s been reading it since early high school, and then he was specifically saying he really liked one line. He said, “I think it is the most poignant line I have ever read from you.” But what’s really interesting is that he seems to have misremembered the line. He remembered it as “A high-level thinker sees a foggy world through clear eyes, while a low-level thinker sees a clear world through foggy eyes.” In fact, what I’d written at the time was: “The scientist’s clear vision shows them a complex, foggy world, the Attorney’s foggy vision shows them a world that’s straightforward, full of crisp lines and black-and-white distinctions.”

Clearly, Mangione saw himself as the “high-level thinker” who saw the world clearly. He was smart, top of his prep school class and went to an Ivy League school. And his manifesto ended with a reference to himself seeing things as they are: “Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.” But as Urban points out, he seems to have not only botched the quote but misunderstood it.

On one hand, I could see how someone would read this and become convinced that they had a special ability to see the world with clarity. But when I read the line again, I get confused. Because the message is that the cleareyed person sees the true complexity and messiness of reality. For someone seeing things that way, it would be apparent that Brian Thompson is a human being who had kids, and his kids are going to, for the rest of their life, be kids whose dad died at a young age. When you think of him in those terms, as a three-dimensional human being, you don’t assassinate him. To assassinate him you have to dehumanize him, and call him a monster and a cockroach and a burden on society — which is the simplified worldview of the foggy thinker in the quote.

Political murder is the act of someone who believes the lines are simple. He was convinced he was on the right side of history and that’s all that mattered. But clearer vision would have shown him a world with more nuance, not only about Brian Thompson but about alternative health care arrangements like single-payer. Those systems are not without their own significant trade-offs. Mangione skipped over all of that and became a street thug with a cause.

This is one of the things that happens when you dehumanize your enemies and think in black and white, a murder can just become … whatever. Or that’s just a chess move for our side.

That’s what all of the leftist currently tweeting #FreeLuigi believe. They aren’t clear thinkers either, though I’d bet most of them also see themselves that way.

This post was originally published on this site

Has anyone ever delivered a worse sales pitch at a worse time? The House finally dropped its 1500-page continuing resolution to kick the budget can down the road to March, and critics have already dug out weird and costly tidbits that apparently intend to grease its skids toward passage. 

House Speaker Mike Johson wants to whip House Republicans into backing this CR in order to avoid a government shutdown. The last thing he needed was for Senate Democrats’ #2 in leadership to start promoting the pay raise buried in the bill — and to pick a fight with CNN’s Manu Raju over whether members of Congress deserve increases more than reporters. And yet here we are:

NEW: Number 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin has no clue what’s in the funding bill, is pleased to find out he’s getting a pay raise.

No wonder why our country is $36T in debt.

Durbin got offended after CNN’s Manu Raju asked if lawmakers deserved a pay raise considering all the… pic.twitter.com/GeXBWyuFQQ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 18, 2024

MANU RAJU: The members are giving themselves a pay raise. Do you guys deserve a pay raise?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well, that’s news to me. It’s good news! (LAUGHTER) You know, what is it been ten years or 14 years and no COLA? No change at all. I think it’s about time something’s done.

MANU RAJU: You support giving yourselves a pay raise.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well I don’t know what it is. How would I not know about a pay raise–?

MANU RAJU: But I mean, people look at the performance of Congress, say, why should we give them more money?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: What about the media? Think about that for a second.

MANU RAJU: We’re not paid by public money.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I know you’re not. But I mean, half of your listeners are not there anymore. You’re still getting the same paycheck? What’s going on?

MANU RAJU: Well, I mean, you’re taxpayer money, I mean, do you guys deserve a raise?

Let the record note that members of Congress get paid $174,000 a year — and usually only work 37 weeks in DC. They have almost no prohibition on owning their own businesses at the same time, within the bounds of conflicts of interest. Most of them are wealthy, either before coming to Congress or (ahem) become so while serving. They have opportunities to generate income through speaker’s fees and books, not to mention opportunities for seven-figure salaries after they leave public office via lobbying. 

Besides, their compensation already puts them far above that of their constituents. Their base salary for Congress is roughly three times that of the mean household income for Americans, and their pension system guarantees them a comfortable retirement after just serving ten years. Those households just had their own buying power and retirement funds eroded significantly over the last four years thanks to inflation, caused in large part to bills that Durbin himself pushed, and now Durbin wants the 6.6% bump that would result from this language, also the kind of raise that private-sector workers rarely get even in good years.

This is a hell of a moment to plead poverty.

Furthermore, Durbin’s decision to pick a fight over media salaries isn’t just an apples-to-oranges issue, it’s flat-out wrong. Not to defend the media, but as Raju points out, media orgs don’t make payroll by taxing Americans. This may also be news to Durbin, but the media industry has cut thousands of jobs this year alone, as Aaron Blake reminds him:

I would just submit that plenty of journalists *have* actually seen their wages reduced because people don’t consume our product.

Their salaries were reduced to $0. https://t.co/mrJwJtfkBz

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 18, 2024

Durbin makes himself look like an inhabitant of Panem in The Hunger Games with this argument. 

No one’s buying the idea that he didn’t know about the pay raise, either. House negotiators would have to be including Senate leadership on this package in order to ensure its quick adoption on the abbreviated timeline that the current CR expiration is imposing on the process. It would be especially important to have Senate Democrats dialed in on the bill, since they control the floor for the next two-plus weeks. Are we to believe that Durbin’s out of the loop on the last legislative action that he and Chuck Schumer can control? Come on, man. 

Not that the rest of the CR looks much better. Punchbowl News has a decent overview of the details, including the process used to attempt to pass the bill, and Johnson has some ‘splainin to do. And he’ll need a lot of Democrats to bail him out because of that process, too:

The speaker did a temperature check Tuesday with hardliners on the Rules Committee — GOP Reps. Chip Roy (Texas), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — to see whether they’d support a rule for the CR.

But the trio indicated they have a host of demands they’d need in exchange for doing so: adherence to the 72-hour rule for considering legislation, as well as votes on spending offsets and language restricting the sell-off of border wall materials.

Johnson hasn’t agreed to these conditions. So unless something dramatically changes, he’ll have no other choice but to bring the CR up under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. A floor vote has yet to be scheduled, but the general consensus is that the House will take it up on Thursday. That leaves the Senate just one day to clear the measure before Friday’s midnight deadline.

That has Republicans seeing red, ominously including the fellows of DOGE:

This bill should not pass https://t.co/eccQ6COZJ4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

And this has Republicans rethinking Johnson’s position in the next session of Congress, at least provisionally:

House GOP critics of how Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is handling government funding talks are already beginning to float names of possible challengers, people told Fox News Digital.

Two GOP lawmakers told Fox News Digital that House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., were all mentioned in early talks about alternatives.

 This is where the disappointing House results from last month’s election come into play. Johnson has a tiny margin of error on any potential controversial floor vote, and any dissatisfaction would give rise to a challenge on the Speaker vote. Loading up the CR with this kind of pork is precisely what conservatives didn’t want; they wanted to put off these issues for next session’s House and a more rational regular-order process. Why cave to Senate Democrats now rather than wait for GOP control of the upper chamber? Pass a clean CR, force Chuck Schumer to eat it in the final days of Democrat control, and let Schumer own the consequences. 

Stand by for more developments on this CR as its provisions emerge. And let’s see just how anxious Democrats will be to rescue Johnson once the proverbial effluvium hits the proverbial fan, especially with Dick Durbin’s sales pitch ringing in the ears of voters. 

This post was originally published on this site

Given how relentlessly left-wing the Washington Post is (and always has been) it’s always a surprise when the editorial board publishes something reasonable and moderate. On Sunday, the board published a piece about the Supreme Court’s review of a Tennessee ban on gender affirming care and basically agreed that the state is right to be skeptical at this point.

Multiple European health authorities have reviewed the available evidence and concluded that it was “very low certainty,” “lacking” and “limited by methodological weaknesses.” Last week, Britain banned the use of puberty blockers indefinitely due to safety concerns.

“Children’s healthcare must always be evidence-led,” British Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said in a press release. “The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”

In short, health authorities outside the US are walking back their commitment to gender affirming care for minors because the evidence supporting this approach is lacking. And this brings us to the Dutch protocol which was really the foundation backing up gender affirming care. It was a very small study with no control group.

Early studies from a Dutch clinic seemed to show promising results, but the research started with only 70 patients (dropping to 55 in a follow-up study) and no control group. Treatment results that look impressive in small groups often vanish when larger groups are studied.

A British study attempting to replicate the Dutch researchers’ success with puberty blockers “identified no changes in psychological function” among those treated.

Best of all, the Post doesn’t shy away from the elephant in the room, i.e. the ideologically motivated doctors who seem to be hiding research that contradicts their views.

The British lackluster results were published nine years after the study began, after Britain’s High Court ruled that children younger than 16 were unlikely to be able to form informed consent to such treatments. Internal communications from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health suggest that the group tried to interfere with a review commissioned from a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, told the New York Times that a government-funded study of puberty blockers she helped conduct, which started in 2015, had not found mental health improvements, and those results hadn’t been published because more time was needed to ensure the research wouldn’t be “weaponized.” Medical progress is impossible unless null or negative results are published as promptly as positive ones.

I wrote about Johanna Olson-Kennedy here and here. She admits to sitting on the results of her own study because they didn’t show what she wanted them to show. She is also being sued by a detransitioner who claims (with evidence) that Olson-Kennedy pushed her toward medicalization after a single meeting. By age 13 she was on testosterone and by age 14 she had a double mastectomy.

The story about WPATH’s meddling in Johns Hopkins research is also revealing. 

From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins team’s work. In December 2017, for example, Donna Kelly, an executive director at WPATH, told Karen Robinson, the EPC’s director, that the WPATH board felt the EPC researchers “cannot publish their findings independently”. A couple of weeks later, Ms Kelly emphasised that, “the [WPATH] board wants it to be clear that the data cannot be used without WPATH approval”…

in May 2018 Ms Robinson signed a contract granting WPATH power to review and offer feedback on her team’s work, but not to meddle in any substantive way. After wpath leaders saw two manuscripts submitted for review in July 2020, however, the parties’ disagreements flared up again. In August the WPATH executive committee wrote to Ms Robinson that WPATH had “many concerns” about these papers, and that it was implementing a new policy in which WPATH would have authority to influence the EPC team’s output—including the power to nip papers in the bud on the basis of their conclusions.

The Hopkins team published only one paper after WPATH implemented its new policy: a 2021 meta-analysis on the effects of hormone therapy on transgender people. Among the recently released court documents is a WPATH checklist confirming that an individual from WPATH was involved “in the design, drafting of the article and final approval of [that] article”. (The article itself explicitly claims the opposite.) Now, more than six years after signing the agreement, the EPC team does not appear to have published anything else, despite having provided WPATH with the material for six systematic reviews, according to the documents.

Simply put, this is not how science works. You don’t cancel studies that don’t show what you hoped they would. WPATH is acting as an advocacy group and shouldn’t be trusted. The Post editorial board concludes there is no substitute for quality medical research in deciding how to approach these issues and clearly until we have that research there is room for states to act to protect minors.

Also today, the Post has introduced an entirely new commenting system which looks a lot like the much superior one used by the NY Times. Already, the results are improved. Here’s the top (most upvoted) comment.

Far too often, usually in comments sections, people attribute using caution regarding treating trans youths as being just a “Republican/Christo” plot.

Completely ignoring the fact that caution is the view of many scientists, most of whom are liberals.

I have a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt. Until I retired I was a professor of psychology and had an active therapy and consulting practice. I have read the research, a lot of it.

I retired 20 years ago. If, before I retired, a parent brought their child to me for help with this issue this is the approach I would have taken: If the child had been displaying signs of gender confusion since he was a toddler then that suggests a quite different approach from the current situation of girls identifying as trans when they reach adolescence. We have known about this small group of trans children (usually boys) for decades. The latter is a new phenomenon.

I would NOT recommend to parents a clinic where trans surgeries are done. Those folks have a financial interest in operating contrary to the research. And are not unbiased.

I would recommend this: That the parents and perhaps the child spend several months with me reading the Cass Report, which is the most complete and thorough and sensitive approach to the issue that exists. But it is long, and would be difficult for someone not trained in research to follow. In other words, my job would be to provide all parties the BEST information science has to offer, so their decisions would be ones they had the best chance of living with in the long run.

When you read criticisms of the Cass Report, ask those criticizing it whether they have a financial stake in providing treatment in any way. Or whether they belong to or adhere to any trans advocacy groups It is the epitome of good science.

This is a big improvement on the usual garbage that infests the Post’s comment section.