Saturday Miscellany

First, before the verdict, Naomi Wolf, no member of the vast right wing conspiracy she, said this on Twitter:

As a former Democratic political consultant, it’s deeply embarrassing to me that the party’s best idea now for winning is to imprison the opposition leader.

Second, from Daniel Greenfield:

1,000 New Yorkers Were Murdered While Prosecutors Went After Trump While New Yorkers were being killed, robbed and raped, New York prosecutors spent their time chasing Trump to find him guilty on 34 counts of being a Republican

Or else, there’s a Daily Mail headline that speaks volumes:

Progressive DA Alvin Bragg downgraded staggering 60% of felony cases to lesser charges last year-- amid fury over criminals being repeatedly released to roam the streets of the Big Apple.

Third, from Elie Honig, who does commentary for CNN, via New York Magazine--

The jury did its job, and this case was an ill-conceived, unjustified mess. Sure, victory is the great deodorant, but a guilty verdict doesn’t make it all pure and right. Plenty of prosecutors have won plenty of convictions in cases that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place. “But they won” is no defense to a strained, convoluted reach unless the goal is to “win,” now, by any means necessary and worry about the credibility of the case and the fallout later.

As for the indictment, Honig says this:

The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.

In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.

The Manhattan DA’s employees reportedly have called this the “Zombie Case” because of various legal infirmities, including its bizarre charging mechanism. But it’s better characterized as the Frankenstein Case, cobbled together with ill-fitting parts into an ugly, awkward, but more-or-less functioning contraption that just might ultimately turn on its creator.

Here, prosecutors got their man, for now at least — but they also contorted the law in an unprecedented manner in their quest to snare their prey.

The district attorney was either corrupt or stupid. In no sense can we say that he was doing his job.

Fourth, from Ben Shapiro on the concept of a two-tiered justice system:

Trump is the threat to democracy? Are you serious? Biden has:  

Activated party apparatchiks in NY to convict Trump on spurious charges, thus leading to the possible jailing of his chief political rival;

Activated his DOJ to target Trump in 3 separate jurisdictions while avoiding criminal culpability for himself and his son; - 

Tried to use OSHA to force 80 million Americans to take the vaxx; 

Defied the Supreme Court by illegally waiving student loan debt;  

Falsely claimed that any election he uses will have been decided by racist Republican voter suppression; 

Attacked the Supreme Court directly; 

Used governmental agencies to threaten social media companies;  Attacked states for attempting to enforce border law... 

The list continues. That's just the short version.

Fifth, Stephen Kruiser offers this mixed metaphor:

The pathetic toddlers on the American Left didn't get their way in 2016 and have been throwing the longest diaper-filling, snot-bubbling tantrum on record ever since. 

Sixth, Alan Dershowitz considered it a sad day for American justice:

This is still the weakest case I’ve ever seen in 60 years. The fact that the jury convicted based on false instructions, wrong instructions, based on the jurors having been between 85 and 90 percent picked from a veneer that hates Trump and doesn’t want him to be president, the fact that the jury convicted doesn’t make this case any stronger or any better,” Dershowitz said.

 “I was recently just 15 minutes ago on with The Times of London and they were saying, ‘Well, doesn’t the fact that the jury convicted prove it was a strong case?’ No, no! It proves that it was of a case that was brought in a jurisdiction where a conviction was almost assuredly guaranteed.”

Seventh, from Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame:

I was in Europe for the beginning of this case during the Stormy Daniels testimony, when she was testifying, talking to sovereign wealth funds. We've done a lot of damage to the American brand here. A lot of damage. Trump and Biden are going to be gone in four years but the damage done here to the office of the executive, the 200-year-old brand, the reason we can go overseas and bring billions of dollars back to the United States is they trust our system.

This has rocked the bedrock of that belief. She [Stormy Daniels] was testifying about condom brands and sex. They were asking me "What is this?" "Wasn't this the President of the United States?" I think what we should do and think about it as a country, forget about whatever this is that's really going on here. What is it doing to the brand of the United States of America? 

Because in just a few months, these guys are gone, but the executive -- when a president leaves the office of the White House, the President of the United States, you better murder somebody if you are going to be brought into trial. You don't do condom brand, porno stars -- this is hurting what every entrepreneur does in America.

For me, we dragged our brand through the toilet with this one. I hope everybody understands it. Anytime you want to talk about this case, it has to be so partisan. Forget about that. Think about America, the mother egg that we want to protect. Is this what we want to do to former presidents? Forget about Trump, any former president. We have to raise the bar in bringing these cases because we drag them -- and porn stars? I've never understood. What does she have to do with campaign law? 

Nobody understood that overseas in London. Where's the condom brand and the law on campaign financing. I didn't get it either. I said, look, it is an unusual time, let's talk about my deal instead. They said, "No, let's talk about the porn star. We're trying to understand how this is working." Really not great for me trying to bring back money for data centers. Really bad.

Eighth, to change the subject, students in Edinburgh have been caught up in the meme about Israel being an apartheid regime.

To which, a professor named Denis MacEoin replied:

… there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. 

I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. 

But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of. Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. 

Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). 

In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa . 

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres. In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke? 

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. 

Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on? 

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. 

Ninth, in an important development on the transmania front, a court in North Carolina has allowed someone who was tricked into transitioning to sue the doctors who signed on to the procedure. This is just the beginning. The attack on doctors who promote child mutilation will continue for decades.

The Dominion Report has the story:

A North Carolina judge has ruled that detransitioner Prisha Mosley will be allowed to sue the “gender affirming” doctors who “treated” her, marking the first such suit known to proceed before the courts.

Tenth, as a sidelight on the current fracas in the Middle East, we report a small detail that certainly matters. In Saudi Arabia, student textbooks no longer refer to the Palestinian cause.

This comes from Zero Hedge:

Saudi textbooks have removed the name “Palestine” from most maps where it previously appeared, a study by an Israeli think-tank said. The study, conducted by the NGO Impact-se, tracks changes in Saudi school textbooks over the past five years, as reflected in the 2023-24 academic year. 

It reviews 371 textbooks published between 2019 and 2024, and highlights content removed, altered or that which remained unchanged. A social studies textbook for grade 12 defining Zionism as a racist movement was no longer taught from 2023, while another textbook still taught has removed the chapter about the Palestinian cause, the study revealed.

Eleventh, last Wednesday I offered some commentary about a television show called: Summer House. I suggested that it showed us young women wrecking their marriages and their relationships. 

Now, Nicholas Kristof has opined about the topic in the New York Times. He is especially concerned that marriage has become outmoded. Whatever the reasons, the least we can say, as I suggested, is that women are rejecting wifehood.

Kristof received many letters from young women who believed that marriage was a patriarchal plot designed to enslave them. Thus, their behavior conforms to their ideology, which is not the same as saying that it conforms to some preternatural need.

Anyway, Kristof wrote this in a more recent column:

Many women readers in particular dismissed heterosexual marriage as an outdated institution that pampers men while turning women into unpaid servants.

“Marriage is generally GREAT for men,” declared a woman reader from North Carolina whose comment on the column was the single most liked, with more than 2,000 people recommending it. Wives get stuck with the caregiving, she added, and “the sex that receives the care is gonna be happier than the sex that doesn’t receive the care.”

The second most recommended reader comment came from a woman who said that when she and her women friends get together, “We all say, ‘Never again.’ Men require a lot of care. They can be such babies.”

Fair enough, being alone, unmarried and childless is an option, one that is becoming more and more attractive to more and more women.

And yet, if a woman makes this choice, she should not blame men and should not complain about being alone. 

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