Wednesday Potpourri

First, if you have not been following the adventures of Harry and Meghan you should count yourself among the happy few. Living in exile in California they have managed to alienate their British friends and family, to the point where they are barely acceptable as lunch companions.

Anway, among their appalling errors of judgment we must count this-- naming their daughter after Queen Elizabeth. Not by naming the child Elizabeth or even Lizzie, but by using a term of endearment that was used by those nearest and dearest to her. That is, her parents, her sister and her husband. That term was: Lilibet.  

At the time, I yielded to the inimitable Julie Burchill, who understood immediately that the gesture was supremely vulgar:

Ten days ago, having read that the Sussexes (in the latest foray of what I coined 'The Grabdication') had named their baby after someone to whom they have brought nothing but grief this year, and that they apparently bought the website lilibetdiana.com two days before the news was made public, I called them out on their sanctimonious virtue-signalling with a pithy tweet: 'What a missed opportunity — they could have called it Georgina Floydina.'

Burchill is an excellent writer, but she is hardly a paragon of propriety. If she understood that the gesture was crude, vulgar and insulting… surely Harry should have known.

Now, we learn, via a new biography of King Charles III, that the Queen herself was enraged at the gesture. To which Harry replied that he asked and been granted permission.

Now, we discover that Harry either misunderstood or was lying. In truth, he should have known better. 

Rebecca English wrote in The Daily Mail:

In fact, I understand the Queen was so upset by the Sussexes’ decision that she told aides: ‘I don’t own the palaces, I don’t own the paintings, the only thing I own is my name. And now they’ve taken that.’

Don’t expect a reconciliation any time soon.

Second, on the transmania front, researchers have discovered that giving children puberty blockers damages their developing brains:

Powerful 'puberty blocker' drugs given to hundreds of young people who are confused about their gender significantly risks lowering their IQs, a leading scientific expert has warned.

In an alarming study, Sallie Baxendale, professor of clinical neuropsychology at University College London, called for 'urgent' research into the impact of the drugs on children's brain functions.

NHS England stopped routinely prescribing the drugs, which halt bodily changes in puberty, last year after a damning review found that the treatment could interrupt the process of the brain maturing.

But private gender clinics are still giving puberty suppressants to under 16s in the UK – and trans activists insist the drugs are safe.

Now Prof Baxendale has presented evidence about the 'detrimental impact' of the controversial drugs on young people's IQ levels. 

Third, speaking of Ozempic, you will recall that one Zachary Karabell wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the drug would solve the world’s obesity problems and usher in a new age of superior health and terminal thinness.

As I said at the time and repeated, not so fast. 

Now, the Daily Mail reports that the drug is not quite as safe as it seemed:

A woman who will suffer diarrhea for the rest of her life after using Ozempic is among dozens of patients who are suing the maker of the blockbuster weight loss drug over claims it left them with crippling stomach paralysis, a DailyMail.com investigation reveals.

Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, is facing lawsuits from patients across America who say they experienced extreme side effects which they were allegedly not warned about.

Thousands more patients have also come forward to claim they suffered adverse reactions to the drugs and attorneys say many more could join the growing legal campaign.

Most of the patients claim they suffered from gastroparesis, which is the medical name for paralysis of the stomach. The condition, which can be life-threatening, causes a build-up of food in the gut and symptoms include nausea, vomiting and severe pain.

DailyMail.com reviewed more than a dozen lawsuits filed since November by patients who were diagnosed with gastroparesis after using Ozempic and Wegovy, including some who suffered 'life-threatening' bowel injuries and face lifelong consequences.

Fourth, the world was breathlessly awaiting the Biden administration response to Yemeni Houthi harassment of cargo ships traveling through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. 

And then, in conjunction with the British military, we bombed a number of targets in Yemen, but not before giving the Houthis a heads up. 

Anyway, this show of force seems to have been more theatrical than effective.

The Daily Mail reports:

US and UK airstrikes on Houthis have had limited impact, a US official has warned - after an American cargo ship was hit by rebel missiles.

Monday's attack by the Houthis on the M/V Gibraltar Eagle - a Marshall Islands-flagged, US-owned and operated container ship - did not result in serious damage.

No one was hurt, and the ship was continuing it journey. But, an official told CNN, it showed that Friday's attack on the Houthis failed to significantly degrade their capabilities.

Fifth, how did Fani Willis, the Atlanta prosecuting attorney, get her job. Now, we know that it was not her exceptional legal mind. 

The same applies to her sometime paramour, one Nathan Wade, who she hired to prosecute the Trump case, despite his not having any experience prosecuting anything at all.

In any event Willis was complaining yesterday about how black people are not being recognized for their achievements. Which leaves open the question of whether they should be recognized for not achieving. But, she was suggesting that blacks should be judged by different standards, regardless.

Surely, she did not give hundreds of thousands of dollars to Nathan Wade, money he used to take her on vacation, because of his great legal mind.

The sad part of the current stage in the civil rights movement is that America has given credentials to people who have not earned them and has given jobs to people who cannot do them. When anyone points this out, they are denounced for being racist. 

To be more precise, Willis declaimed against those who refused to recognize his non-achievements as achievements. She blamed it all on racism.

Fani Willis waxed messianic at a MLK Day celebration in Atlanta yesterday. She said:

You cannot expect black women to be perfect and save the world. We need to be allowed to stumble.

At least, we now know that she did not get her job because of the content of her character. 

Since she was speaking at a church, she might have turned to the book of Proverbs, 16:18:

Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Otherwise, we can call it plain old arrogance.

Sixth, in the meantime the pro-Hamas anti-Semites found a new target: the Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital-- a place that specializes in treating cancer. 

As the New York Post reported on the story, it showed that this movement is fundamentally about anti-Semitism:

Former NHL player Colby Cohen wrote: 'If you are wondering what scum of the earth look like, it's these people harassing and yelling at children at Sloan Kettering getting cancer treatments. Hard to fathom there are adults that condone and support that type of behavior.'

'Protesting at Memorial Sloan Kettering is the PLO playbook. Like the Munich Olympics without the violence (yet). They want attention & are 100% ok if it is negative. Because they know that they will find sympathy among certain audiences no matter how provocatively they behave,' added another user.

Actor Yuval David added: 'The 'Pro-Palestinian' protestors are only about being anti-Jewish and anti-anything that includes Jews or has any Jewish leaders or administrators.' 

Naturally, none of this has prevented talking heads on MSNBC from going into a frenzy about how Trump is Hitler and that white Christians are all bigots.

In point of fact, none of the demonstrators who are calling for Jewish blood are white Christians. I trust that you did not need me to tell you that.

Seventh, the New Yorker has a long, drawn out piece about breastfeeding. Leslie Jamison tells you a lot more about the process than you wanted to know. If you are like me you did not need to hear all of the details of breast feeding her infant while on a book tour. 

I quote it for a more devious reason:

In April, I took the baby on a book tour. She was three months old. My mother came with us. Four weeks, eighteen cities. We stood at curbside baggage stands in Boston, Las Vegas, Cedar Rapids, San Francisco, Albuquerque, with our ridiculous caravan of suitcases, our bulky car seat, our portable crib. The baby in her travel stroller. The unbuckled carrier hanging loose from my waist like a second skin. Everywhere we went, I brought a handheld noise machine called a shusher. It was orange and white, and it calmed my baby down better than my own voice.

Her story recounts how the birth of her daughter corresponded with the death of her marriage. Naturally, she and her husband are in couples therapy. And, it did not work.

For our purposes, we can ask whatever possessed her to take a baby on a book tour-- even with her mother along to help her. In truth, she was trying to make a feminist point-- about how work and motherhood could coexist. 

Taking my baby on tour was a way of saying, I can be the father who goes away, and the mother who stays. It was only because of my mother that I got to do both. She held the baby whenever I wasn’t holding the baby. She made it possible for me to approximate the thing I’d always admired her for doing, crafting a self that understood work and motherhood as forces that could feed rather than starve each other.

Sometimes I wondered whether I was asking too much of the baby, demanding that she sleep in all these strange hotel rooms so that I could prove something to myself about work and motherhood making room for each other.

Apparently, after it was over there was no more room or need for a husband.

Eighth, the weak-kneed cowards in the Biden administration are trying to get the Israelis to stop the war against Hamas before it concludes. Nothing surprising there. And the Bidenites seem to fear that other countries in the region are rallying to the Palestinian cause.

As it happens, there really is no Palestinian cause. Saying that the Palestinians want self-determination, human rights and a prosperous capitalistic nation flies in the face of reality-- how many other countries in the region fulfill the same predicates?

Palestinians strongly support Hamas, whose charter pledges the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. Which part of that do you find to be ambiguous? Which part expresses a desire for political freedom? 

As for the Saudis, they are not making many public pronouncements, but they will, as I have noted before, be more than happy to see Hamas eliminated. They care less about the Palestinian cause than do the losers in the Biden administration.

Raylan Givens recounts this on Twitter:

Saudi Arabia Secretary of State: “We will recognize Israel under a full normalization.” Also, reports today claimed the Arab world has no interest in rebuilding Gaza, just for it to be destroyed again a year from now. Everyone understands Hamas needs to be eliminated completely.

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