Saturday Miscellany

First, led by Chuck Schumer, Senate Democrats are becoming the anti-Israel party. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress. As you recall, the last time Netanyahu did the same in 2015 many members of the Democratic Party boycotted the event.

Now, after Netanyahu addressed the Senate Republican Caucus via Videolink last Wednesday, Chuck Schumer rejected a request to address the Democratic caucus:

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declined a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to the Senate Democratic Caucus, Punchbowl News reported on Wednesday.

Punchbowl reported that Schumer said these conversations should not happen "in a partisan manner."

Obviously, this is incoherent. The Democrats are afraid of losing votes in Michigan and Minnesota.

Second, if you like poll results, if you thrill to the notion of a two-state solution in the Middle East, and if you believe that the people of Gaza and the West Bank want nothing more than self-determination, you will be disabused of your naivete by this report, from the National Review. It comes from Zach Kessel :

Seventy-one percent of Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank believe Hamas made the right decision in attacking Israel on October 7, according to a new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an organization primarily funded by the European Union and the United States-based Ford Foundation.

The percentage of West Bank residents who support the Hamas attack has decreased slightly since December, when 82 percent of West Bank respondents said they agreed with the decision, though support for the terror attack has increased in Gaza, rising from 57 percent in December to 71 percent in March.

Ninety-one percent of Palestinians, according to the survey, do not think Hamas has committed war crimes, and 93 percent say the terrorist organization did not commit the well documented acts of rape and civilian slaughter that took place on October 7.

When asked who should control the Gaza Strip after the current war ends, 64 percent of respondents in the West Bank and 52 percent in Gaza said Hamas should rule the territory, whereas 13 percent chose the Palestinian Authority without president Mahmoud Abbas and 11 percent selected the PA with Abbas. Another 64 percent of respondents said they believe Hamas will defeat Israel by the time the war is over.

Seventy-five percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and 62 percent in Gaza say they are satisfied with Hamas’s role; support for Hamas within the West Bank has dropped by 10 points over the past three months, though it has risen by ten points in Gaza over the same period of time.

When asked about “the best means of achieving Palestinian goals in ending the occupation and building an independent state,” a plurality of Palestinians — 39 percent in Gaza and 46 percent in the West Bank — believe “armed struggle” to be the ideal option. To that end, a slight minority of Palestinians believe in the idea of a two-state solution and only 38 percent support negotiations to achieve such a goal.

As we have suggested in these pages, Tommy Friedman and Antony Blinken are basically blowing smoke. 

Third, why do the Palestinians continue to want more of the same? Why do they believe that they are winning? Why do they continue, surrounded by the rubble of what used to be Gaza, to believe that the October 7 massacre was a rousing success?

Simply put, consider the support they are receiving around the world. And consider how many people have forgotten October 7 and have directed their ire at Israel.

The Palestinians believe that they are winning the propaganda war. Heck, even Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer are on their side.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized this morning:

Mr. Biden’s public criticism and distancing from Israel signals to other nations that they can go even further and the U.S. likely won’t oppose it. Will he condemn Canada’s grandstanding decision this week to stop selling arms to Israel? Crickets from the White House so far. The President’s fading support for Israel is a message to all American allies that the U.S. can’t be trusted if their cause runs afoul of the Democratic Party’s left wing.

Fourth, South Africa is running out of water and electricity. The story, from CBS News, involves Johannesburg, but it brings to mind the water crisis suffered by Capetown several years ago.

For two weeks, Tsholofelo Moloi has been among thousands of South Africans lining up for water as the country's largest city, Johannesburg, confronts an unprecedented collapse of its water system affecting millions of people.

Residents rich and poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after decades of neglect is also largely to blame. 

The public's frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an election this year.

A country already famous for its hourslong electricity shortages is now adopting a term called "watershedding" — the practice of going without water, from the term loadshedding, or the practice of going without power.

Moloi, a resident of Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg, isn't sure she or her neighbors can take much more.

I wrote about the Capetown water crisis on February 6, 1918. I recall from that post that the city government considered the possibility of building a desalination plant.

But then they discovered that the best plants were being built by Israeli companies, so they rejected that solution. Now South Africa is leading the world in trying to indict Israel for war crimes and genocide.

Fifth, on a lighter note, our mentally disabled president did it again. He offered up yet another word salad:

If we drove out to the airport and put you on Air Force One and you had a prescription you needed to fill, and it was an American company that made it, I’d say, ‘Ok. Let’s fly to Toronto or Berlin or to London or to Rome or any other major city in America.

Sixth, a confused high school girl shot and killed her mother and injured her father. The girl from Mississippi is named Carly Madison Grigg. She thinks that she is a boy. 

Wesley Yang comments on the tragic story:

We are encouraging all alienated, troubled, mentally disturbed young people to identify into a made up identity category that comes with a lurid, hyperbolic narrative of oppression and an online community rife with cheerleading for suicide and violence

Seventh, the other day I was saying that it is difficult to assess the practical consequences of affirmative action programs. How much damage do underqualified physicians-- to take an example-- do on the job. 

Happily, or, not so happily, Ann Coulter offers some examples in her Thursday  column. She begins with the case of Dr. Patrick Chavis, the man who took the place that ought to have been given to Dr. Allan Bakke. You will recall that Dr. Bakke gave his name to a Supreme Court decision favoring affirmative action:

…. it already has happened, countless times, all over the country — but notoriously, to the most famous affirmative action doctor of all: the black applicant who took Allan Bakke’s place at the medical school of the University of California at Davis. Here was an incompetent black doctor whose medical errors couldn’t be brushed under the rug, though affirmative action proponents did their best.

Dr. Patrick Chavis openly admitted that he never would have gotten into medical school without UC Davis’ affirmative action program. Sen. Teddy Kennedy, The New York Times and the Nation magazine all touted Chavis as an affirmative action success story! Unlike Bakke, who went to work at the Mayo Clinic, Chavis was serving a disadvantaged community and “making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families,” as Sen. Kennedy said.

Yes, he was making a difference in his patients’ lives, mostly by shortening them. Dr. Chavis’ liposuction surgery left one patient bleeding, vomiting and urinating uncontrollably. But instead of taking her to a hospital, he let her bleed in his home for another 40 hours. By the time she managed to escape and check herself into a hospital, she’d lost 70% of her blood. (To be fair, she looked amazing when bikini season rolled around!)

Miraculously, she lived, as did most of his other liposuction patients who ended up in the emergency room. One, Tammaria Cotton, did not.

But the affirmative action cover-up can never end: It took the California medical board a year to suspend Dr. Chavis’ license, with patient advocates screaming bloody murder at such a pathetically slow response.

Hmmm.

For more horror stories, check out Ann’s column.

Eighth, on the transmania front, a company called Planet Fitness has defended a trans woman, allowing him to undress in the women’s locker room. A woman who protested the intrusion had her membership revoked. As a result, the market value of the stock has declined precipitously. 

CBS News reports:

Planet Fitness' valuation has plummeted $400 million in five days after they banned a member who shared a photo of a 'trans woman' using a female locker room. 

The company's value dropped from $5.3 billion on March 14 to $4.9 billion on March 19, and its shares are down by 13.59 percent compared to a month ago.

The decline follows Planet Fitness refusing to walk back its decision to ban a member who exposed a 'trans woman' shaving in a female locker room earlier this month. 

Patricia Silva was barred after she detailed an incident at her Alaska gym online, where she said she saw a transgender woman in her locker room.

Following backlash against the ban, the company said although some members may feel uncomfortable sharing facilities, 'this discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender member.'

Apparently, the Bud Light fiasco did not teach them anything. 

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