Wednesday Potpourri

First, speaking of a dual system of justice, Chad Felix Greene makes a salient point:

We watched people get arrested for sitting in their cars in a church parking lot for services or walking on the beach during COVID, while BLM protesters were championed as fighting for a greater cause by protesting in huge groups. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Second, in the world of transmania, J. K. Rowling is the enemy. Trans individuals seem especially prone to violence against those they blame for their misery. That would be, the misery that attends pretending that you are something you are not.

Perhaps the hormone treatments, aka poisons, are making people crazy, but Rowling reminds us of what she and those who are close to her have had to endure, for speaking out against transmania:

The rewriting of history begins. Opponents of gender ideology haven't merely 'endured unsparing criticism'. I haven't simply been told I 'betrayed real feminism' or received a few book-burning videos. I've been sent thousands of threats of murder, rape and violence. A trans woman posted my family's home address with a bomb-making guide. My eldest child was targeted by a prominent trans activist who attempted to doxx her and ended up doxxing the wrong young woman. 

I could write a twenty thousand word essay on what the consequences have been to me and my family, and what we've endured is NOTHING compared to the harm done to others. By standing up to a movement that relies on threats of violence, ostracisation and guilt-by-association, all of us have been smeared and defamed, but many have lost their livelihoods. 

Some have been physically assaulted by trans activists. Female politicians have been forced to hire personal security on the advice of police. The news that one of the UK's leading endocrinologists, Dr Hillary Cass, was advised not to travel by public transport for her own safety should shame everyone who let this insanity run amok. 

Lest we forget, gender apostates have been targeted for crimes such as doubting the evidential basis for transitioning children, for arguing for fair sport for women and girls, for wanting to retain single sex spaces and services, especially for the most vulnerable, and for thinking it barbaric to lock in female prisoners with convicted male sex offenders. 

Now the political landscape has shifted, and some who've been riding high on their own supply are waking up with a hell of a hangover. They've started wondering whether calling left-wing feminists who wanted all-female rape centres 'Nazis' was such a smart strategy. Maybe parents arguing that boys ought not to be robbing their daughters of sporting opportunities might, sort of, have a point? Possibly letting any man who says 'I'm a woman' into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all? Mealy-mouthed retconning of what has actually happened over the past ten years is predictable but will not stand. 

I don't doubt those who've turned a blind eye to the purges of non-believers, or even applauded and encouraged them, would rather minimise what the true cost of speaking out was, but 'yes, maybe trans activists went a little over the top at times' takes are frankly insulting. A full reckoning on the effects of gender ideology on individuals, society and politics is still a long way off, but I know this: the receipts will make very ugly reading when that time comes, and there are far too many of them to sweep politely under the carpet.

Third, speaking of irony, you will recall that Ellen DeGeneres and her “wife” Portia di Rossi abandoned big, bad America for the idyllic world of rural Britain.

But then, we will not go so far as to call it an act of God, but her British property has apparently now been flooded.

The Daily Mail reports:

Ellen DeGeneres’s new life in the quaint English countryside has gone dramatically wrong - after her dream home was swamped by astonishing flooding just days after she moved in.

The talk show superstar is living in an idyllic multi-million pound farmhouse in the Cotswolds after deciding to emigrate from the US in protest at Donald Trump’s election win.

But rather than enjoying a pastoral retreat, Ellen, 66, and her wife Portia De Rossi, 51, have been left at the mercy of raging floods which have engulfed their new multi-million pound mansion, MailOnline can reveal.

Dramatic images show the couple’s 43-acre property in the Cotswolds has become swamped in a torrent of flood water following the devastating impact of Storm Bert.

The couple were left virtually marooned just days after moving into their new home after a tributary of the River Thames which runs beside the property broke its banks.

It came after the area was battered by days of torrential rain and winds of up to 80mph.

Roads surrounding the hideaway have been left impassable after being deluged in five feet of water - leaving locals trapped in their homes.

One stricken resident who lives near the couple said: ‘The flood waters are rising by the hour. This is the worst I have seen it in years.’

In late news Ellen has stated that her home did not flood. Perhaps it was only all of the surrounding homes.

Fourth, it seems that the Republican Party holds a monopoly on intelligent women. As Trump fills his administration with a bevy of brilliant and competent women, the women of the American left are protesting, by having their fallopian tubes tied. They believe that this will provide them with reproductive freedom. Apparently, they want to have a monopoly on stupid.

I could not have made that one up.

Newsweek reports:

It's not a procedure you'd expect a 28-year-old to be planning. But for Lydia Echols from Texas, having her fallopian tubes removed is the price she's willing to pay to ensure her reproductive rights.

Newsweek spoke to five women who have either undergone sterilization procedures or plan to in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's victory on November 5. They all expressed fear their reproductive choices will be taken from them under Trump's administration.

"If I am to be denied any rights in the next four (or more) years, I will not give them up without a fight," Echols said.

Stay alert. She is affirming a right to self-sterilize. It’s a new form of contraceptive. As for whether it is reversible, in many cases it is not:

Last week, a 39-year-old from Washington state, who did not want to be named, underwent a bilateral salpingectomy, in which her fallopian tubes were removed.

"I am not happy that I felt forced into a surgery I did not want to alter my body, I feel like the election tied my hands and forced me to be sterilized—that is horrible," she told Newsweek.

Fifth, meanwhile, on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers are deserting en masse.

Kyle Anzalone reports for the Libertarian Institute:

Ukrainian soldiers refusing to report for duty or walking away from their front-line positions are becoming an increasing problem for Kiev. One Ukrainian lawmaker said that there have been as many as 200,000 desertions. 

Ukrainian officials and soldiers told the AP that "Facing every imaginable shortage, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, tired and bereft, have walked away from combat and front-line positions to slide into anonymity."

Evidently, we have not sent enough money to Ukraine.

Sixth, tell me that you are shocked. Considering the general hysteria about how artificial intelligence would propagate misinformation, no one should be surprised to learn that the danger was seriously overblown.

Newsmax reports:

Meta Tuesday said fears that artificial intelligence would unleash a torrent of misinformation to deceive voters around the world did not come true as elections played out around the world this year.

In truth, it was all a rationale proposed by certain government officials to satisfy their lust for censorship.

Seventh, I have occasionally noted that we do well to pay a bit of attention to the revolution that is happening today in Argentina. The new president, Javier Milei, is undoing decades of socialist policies and working to return his country to greatness. He is doing so as a champion of free markets.

People are beginning to notice. Consider this, from The Economist:

The left detests him and the Trumpian right embraces him, but he truly belongs to neither group. He has shown that the continual expansion of the state is not inevitable. And he is a principled rebuke to opportunistic populism, of the sort practised by Donald Trump. Mr Milei believes in free trade and free markets, not protectionism; fiscal discipline, not reckless borrowing; and, instead of spinning popular fantasies, brutal public truth-telling.

What is fascinating is the philosophy behind the figures. Mr Milei is often wrongly lumped in with populist leaders such as Mr Trump, the hard right in France and Germany or Viktor Orban in Hungary. In fact he comes from a different tradition. A true believer in open markets and individual liberty, he has a quasi-religious zeal for economic freedom, a hatred of socialism and, as he told us in an interview this week, “infinite” contempt for the state. Instead of industrial policy and tariffs, he promotes trade with private firms that do not interfere in Argentina’s domestic affairs, including Chinese ones. He is a small-state Republican who admires Margaret Thatcher—a messianic example of an endangered species. His poll ratings are rising and, at this point in his term, he is more popular in Argentina than his recent predecessors were.

As for the record, Milei has already reduced government spending. He was DOGE before it was cool. The New Yorker reports:

When I met him this fall, he had slashed government spending by thirty per cent and had begun reducing inflation. But he had done so by changing the compact between the Argentinean state and its citizens—cutting cost-of-living increases to pensioners, funding for education, and supplies for soup kitchens in poor neighborhoods. Depending on whom you talked to, Milei’s Argentina was either an earthly paradise in the making or an aircraft plunging toward the ground.

How does Milei explain it all:

But, for Milei, the crucial causes of the collapse are government mismanagement, corruption, and, most of all, “communistic” policies—especially the big-government movement named for the late dictator Juan Domingo Perón, whose legacy still shadows Argentina’s politics half a century after his death.

Eighth, on our own dulcet shores, our incoming FBI director, that would be Kash Patel, has a few comments about the Hunter Biden pardon.

I quote:

When was the last time you snorted some crack, paid multiple women for sex, one of which was your dead brother’s wife, then slept with here sister, while having them on the payroll, capturing it all on camera…. All the while snuffing through classified docs your father stole, which you used to get seven figure contracts from America’s enemies, oh yea n unlawfully obtaining a firearm, and got away with it all. Only if your name is Hunter, got a Dad called Joe, n #GovernmentGangsters 2 tiers of justice let it all slide.

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