Saturday Miscellany

 First, when you have lost James Carville you are in serious trouble. Being interviewed by Bill Maher the other day, Carville offered his opinion of the progressive branch of the Democratic Party:

I find the left to be just annoying. In the western, far left — is habitually the most stupid, naive people you could imagine. And they come up with these really goofy constructs, and it’s all about feeling good about yourself.

It is safe to say that Carville, to his credit, disdains therapy culture.

Second, Fidel Castro’s bastard son, aka Justin Trudeau, has been having a bad week.

Rupa Subramanya reports in the Free Press:

 In the span of five days, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has managed to alienate the government of the largest democracy on Earth; anger key allies from Washington, D.C. to Canberra; and outrage Jews around the world.

Now, the promise of Trudeau—the young, strapping progressive born into political royalty, with his ostensibly forward-looking ideas about medically assisted suicide, puberty blockers, and the suspension of truckers’ civil liberties—is on the brink of imploding.

Surely, you will agree that it could not have happened to a more deserving jackass.

Third, the ACLU lost a court challenge to a Tennessee law outlawing child mutilation. To which the highly estimable Libs of TikTok Twitter account offers this:

BREAKING: ACLU promises to fight to be able to chop off the breasts of young confused teenagers and inject irreversible drugs which stunts growth into kids

Fourth, back in the day Ronald Reagan recommended that his fellow Republicans not speak ill of other Republicans. Donald Trump has ignored the lesson.

Trump is currently feuding with the following Republican Governors: 

Reynolds- won re-election by 19.5% (Trump won IA by 8%) DeSantis- won re-election by 19.4% (Trump won FL by 3.5%) Kemp- won re-election by 7.5% (Trump lost GA) Youngkin- Won election…

As electoral strategies go, this does not feel like the best or the brightest.

Fifth, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, not a branch of the vast left wing conspiracy, tells Republicans to be cautious about Trump.

It summarized some of the recent posts that Trump has put up on Truth Social:

Donald Trump suggested the other day that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s highest military officer, deserves execution—as in death. He said NBC should be investigated for treason and that the FBI should raid the homes of Senate Democrats. Then he accused President Biden of being manipulated by “the Fascists in the White House.”

At present, no one has noticed these slightly incontinent remarks. But, the Journal notes, once the election season begins, Republicans will be required to answer for them.

Sixth, you have doubtless never heard of Ariane Tabatabai. She is the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. The office advises the Secretary of Defense on counterterrorism. 

In the past she has worked for the Iranian government and has promoted, in her writings, the interests of Iran. How, Daniel Greenfield asks, did she ever make it to the Pentagon?

Seventh, Heather Mac Donald reports from the Los Angeles school system. The news is not very good. In truth, it is awful. Not only have the children fallen behind; the administrators are doing nothing to bring them up to speed. They are offering leftist indoctrination in place of learning.

In her words:

In 2022, 61 percent of third-graders in the Los Angeles Unified School District did not meet California’s watered-down, equity-driven standard for English. Children not reading by third grade will fall further and further behind in school, since they will be ill-prepared to absorb ever more complex academic content across a range of fields.

In 2022, 59 percent of third-graders failed to meet the state’s already-low standard for math competency. Over 76 percent of LAUSD eighth-graders did not meet math standards. Eighth-grade math is a make-or-break point, after which poorly performing students become ever less likely to master the skills necessary for STEM careers or admission to selective schools.

The school system is avoiding the problem by indoctrinating children in gender identity politics:

But even if fluency in LGBTQ-speak is a school’s primary concern, how will third-graders parse the words “gender expression” and “sex assigned at birth,” much less fathom their meanings, if they can’t do basic third-grade reading? How will third-graders perform the arithmetical calculations necessary to track the ever-increasing number of LGBTQ categories served up by the LAUSD, without third-grade math skills?

Eighth, one understands, if one is minimally sentient, that gender affirming care is merely a euphemism for mutilating children. It is also a way to affirm a delusional belief, a genuinely bad idea.

The United Kingdom has now reported that up to a third of trans-identified teens, when put on puberty blockers, suffered a decline in mental health. 

As for what is called gender affirming surgery, touted as a treatment, a Swedish study showed that children who had undergone it were 19 times more likely to commit suicide.

Ninth, a Harvard Professor, Dr Robert Paalberg, has declared organic food to be a scam.

In his words, from the Daily Mail:

'There is no reliable evidence showing that organically grown foods are more nutritious or safer to eat,' he said. 

'If we follow science, organic food loses its apparent advantage.' 

Tenth, we have on occasion quoted the former Obama administration auto czar, one Steven Rattner. When President Biden chose to suck up to the unions by marching with the UAW, to support their strike, Rattner was not impressed:

“For him to be going on a picket line is outrageous….There’s no precedent for it. The tradition of the president is to stay neutral in these things. I get the politics. The progressives all said, ‘We don’t want a mediator; we want an advocate.’ And he bowed to the progressives, and now he’s going out there to put his thumb on the scale. And it’s wrong.”

Eleventh, remember Susanna Gibson, candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, caught selling pornographic pictures of herself and her husband, to raise cash. 

Now that the world knows about her extracurricular activities, Gibson’s electoral prospects have been declining. Before the expose was published in the Washington Post, she was losing by 4 percentage points. Now, she is losing by around 10 percentage points.

Apparently, porn does not pay.

Twelfth, we all know that America’s college students are suffering from severe emotional distress. Many of them insist that they need emotional support animals, the better to get them through their school year.

Now, however, we discover that many of them prefer emotional support Barbies. One assumes, because one is an inveterate sexist, that females are the demographic most inclined to have emotional support Barbies.

Apparently, these young women are terrified at the prospect of growing up, so they go out and buy more Barbies because they want to get in touch with their inner children.

Is this the problem or the solution? Enquiring minds want to know.

Thirteenth, currently, 8 German NGO ships are in the Mediterranean sea, picking up illegal immigrants and unloading them in Italy. The German government is subsidizing the project.

It is bad enough that the German economy is becoming the weak man in Europe, but its leftist government is undermining its own electoral prospects by practicing a Bidenesque open borders policy.

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