Saturday Miscellany

First, the Justice Department finished its analysis of the Jeffrey Epstein case and concluded that there was no client list and that Epstein committed suicide.

More than a few people, on both sides of the aisle, found this explanation unsatisfactory.

Among them, Alan Dershowitz, who said this:

I know for a fact [Epstein] documents are being suppressed and they're being suppressed to protect individuals. I know the names of the individuals, I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them, but I'm bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can't disclose what I know. But, hand to God, I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that's wrong.

So, who do you believe? I tend to think that Dershowitz is being truthful here and that the Justice Department is protecting someone.

Second, remember Lena Dunham. She produced and starred in a television show called Girls. Then she moved to London and has produced a new show.

About Dunham the highly estimable Julie Burchill has this to say:

To be fair, anything Dunham makes would irritate me. I feel that I have something like an allergy to her. There’s the bovine quality of her face – so at odds with the razor-sharp intelligence her fans claim she has. And there’s the way she appears to have allowed random passers-by to graffiti on her body (if you’re that rich and don’t bother with a decent tattooist, you’re either pathologically stingy or pathetically self-loathing). These combine to make up a most unappealing visual. I can’t talk – I’m a toothless, grey-haired hag. But then, I stopped stripping off in public when I was 18. Dunham spent quite a lot of time doing so throughout her most famous years, during what seemed like an endless series of Girls.

Nothing like a little girl fight to brighten your day.

Third, on the good news front, the Justice Department is cracking down on hospitals and clinics that mutilate children for a living. Dare I say that it is well past time that those who practice such abominations were doing hard time.

The New York Post has the story:

The Trump Department of Justice subpoenaed more than 20 doctors and medical clinics nationwide that perform transgender medical procedures on children, the federal agency announced Wednesday.

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement….

Federal authorities also demanded access to protected patient data to determine whether any laws were violated and to spark policy discussions with providers regarding gender-affirming treatment, sources familiar with the probe told the New York Times.

Fourth, from The Free Press, its TGIF column. Always worth a read:

As floods ravaged Texas, drowning hundreds, some people celebrated. It’s true.

Here’s a Houston-based pediatrician, Dr. Christina B. Propst: “Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.” And I apologize for how vile this is, but here is a former Houston mayoral appointee, Sade Perkins, after posting that the camp was “white-only”: “Maybe it was gods will to wash them lil cu#t$ away.” Perkins had been appointed by the former mayor to Houston’s Food Insecurity Board in 2023, which should make everyone feel very insecure.

Fifth, and then there is the Argentinian economic miracle, thanks to the nation’s new president, Javier Milei. I have often made note of what is happening down under in Argentina. Now the story has made its way to TGIF:

Anyway, Javier is presiding over an economy that’s expanding at an astounding rate, growing 7.7 percent in April compared with the same month last year. And in May, Argentina’s rate of inflation went below 2 percent for the first time in five years.

They emphasize the simple fact that a vast number of credentialed economists warned against Milei’s reform agenda. Now how do they react when they see that they were wrong?

Back in 2023, more than 100 economists signed a letter saying Milei’s policies would be a disaster. The signatories included Thomas Piketty, who you might remember as the author of a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century that liberals didn’t read but did have on their bookshelves a decade ago. Another is Jayati Ghosh, a UMass Amherst professor who recently signed another open letter saying Zohran Mamdani’s whackadoodle economic plans will be great for New York City.

So are Milei’s critics conceding that he had a point? Of course not. Instead, they’re finding Argentines (Argentinians? Argentiners?) who are still poor. And of course they’re also finding economists who say the statistics don’t matter, that they don’t really tell the full story, which is always “capitalism bad.” “[E]conomists warn that the figure fails to capture the reality of ordinary people struggling to cope with the most radical austerity program in Argentina’s recent history,” reports the increasingly ideological Associated Press.

The numbers may be better in Argentina, technically. But the vibes are not better. The American press would never allow it. Repeat after me: Venezuela is a success, and Argentina is a failure.

Sixth, as you must have noticed, the Democratic Party is having an identity crisis. Is it the party of centrists like Bill Clinton or is it the party of progressive maniacs and socialists like Zohran Mamdani? Tis a puzzlement.

Now, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee has announced that the Democratic Party retains a place for anti-Semitic scum like Mamdani.

From the New York Post:

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin brushed off concerns from Jewish Democrats on Wednesday about New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada.”

Martin, elected to lead the DNC in February, suggested that his party welcomes users of the chant associated with violent uprisings against Israel, in an interview with PBS.

“You know, there’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100% of the time with, to be honest with you,” Martin said, when asked by “PBS NewsHour” host Amna Nawaz about Mamdani’s repeated defense of the rallying cry for anti-Israel protesters.

Seventh, if he has been politically engaged I am not aware of it. I am speaking of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank.

After explaining that Zohran Mamdani would be a catastrophe for New York City, Dimon went after Democrats:

“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots,” he said.

“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.”

Does that settle the issue?