RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/04/of-oranges-balls-and-sexual-shape-shifting/

A boy or girl, the parents asked? Well, the doctor averred, ‘Baby has a penis. Boy or girl? We’ll have to wait and see.’

That’s about where we are, I understand. But it isn’t so, is it? Those outside of relatively few loud-mouthed transgender cranks, the intimidated commentariat and woke elites aren’t following the bizarre script and never will. We, the great unwashed, easily distinguish between boys and girls.

Mind you, I’m sympathetic to prominent people being unwilling to try to define what a woman is; which seems to be the question of the moment posed by conservatives to embarrass lefties. To wit, Ketanji Brown Jackson put on the spot in the US Senate hearings.

If I had my wits about me, when asked the question, I’d say males have an X and Y sex chromosome pairing while females have an XX. But I might well forget which is which, if caught by surprise. Like forgetting the unemployment rate. And, I have no real idea what a chromosome is so wouldn’t want to be interrogated. I looked it up in my OED: “a thread like structure of nucleic acids and protein found in the nuclei of most living cells, carrying genetic information in in the form of genes.” OK, still double Dutch.

UK Opposition Leader Keir Starmer got into trouble for refusing to acknowledge that a woman can’t have a penis. That’s a little more problematic than being unable to define a woman. He should watch the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Kindergarten Cop, in which it’s made clear that “boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.” Now that’s one way to answer the question asked of Ms Jackson. But you can understand why this might not do in polite company. And it’s unthinkable that any remake of the movie (apropos the sequel in 2016) would include that kind of dialogue.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/joe-biden-blew-it-on-masks/

For months, it has been obvious to everyone except the president and his inner circle what people really think about Covid restrictions.

‘Biden confronts a host of problems he can’t do much to solve.” So determines John Harwood of CNN.

There’s some truth to this, of course — although my sympathy for opportunistic progressives who discover that they are not, actually, omnipotent, is as limited as one might expect. Still, you’d assume that any president who was facing a tidal wave of bad news would be looking to rack up as many little wins as possible. Inexplicably, with President Biden, that assumption seems to be wrong.

I have read the judicial decision that ended the CDC’s transportation-based mask mandate, and I find myself ambivalent about its reasoning. There is nothing wrong with the judge who issued it being 35 years old, or with her having been appointed by President Trump, or with her having failed to satisfy the American Bar Association, and nor is there is anything inherently wrong with judges deciding whether the government has broken the law. On the merits, however, I could have gone either way. Interpretively and semantically, this was a tricky one. Had Biden’s order been upheld, it would have been legitimate. That it was struck down is legitimate, too. Sometimes, judging can be tough.

The policy, by contrast, was not a tricky one. The policy was remarkably stupid, and that President Biden decided to renew it not once, but twice, after it had clearly run its course, was a testament to his near total lack of political guile. Back in November, I asked, “If, tomorrow, you told a plane full of Americans that they no longer needed to wear their masks, how many do you think would still have them on by the time you’d hung the intercom back on its hook? Twenty? Ten? Three?” Last night, we got an answer to this question. So thrilled by the judge’s decision were America’s beleaguered airlines that most of them chose to broadcast the news mid-flight, where it was met by a supermajority of passengers with the sort of glee that has usually been reserved for the end of a war. Had he been smart, Joe Biden could have owned that glee. Instead, it came in spite of him, courtesy of a Republican-appointed judge, from — of all places — Florida.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/04/19/the_buck_stops__somewhere_else_147488.html

When my kids were little and something went wrong, they always pinned the blame on an absent friend. If there was a crayon drawing scrawled on the bedroom wall, they pointed to their buddy, Michael S. When an avalanche of toys came tumbling down the stairs, it must have been Michael’s fault. My boys seemed oblivious to the fact that Michael and his parents had been living in France for over a year.

Joe Biden’s explanation for America’s troubles is about as convincing as my 4-year-old twins’. Let’s consider a few of these self-inflicted troubles, beginning with the surge of illegal immigration.

Not that the administration dares call it illegal. They call it “irregular immigration” and, like all progressives, use the term “undocumented.” They simply forgot their documents. That Orwellian doublespeak is commonplace in the media, universities, and Washington.

The plain truth is that the Biden administration has exacerbated illegal immigration by overturning a series of successful, Trump-era policies on the southern border. The administration opened the door to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, leaving the Border Patrol overwhelmed and the Biden team without answers. The numbers are reaching historic highs. To make matters worse, the administration has just announced it will jettison Title 42, a public health policy used to curb mass immigration during the early days of the pandemic. So, even worse days are ahead.

Since the administration can’t find anyone to blame for this catastrophe, they simply ignore it. The mainstream media follows suit.

https://www.city-journal.org/another-wave-of-progressive-prosecutors-may-be-coming

A growing number of San Francisco voters have decided that they’ve had enough of Chesa Boudin as their city’s top prosecutor. But across the country, inexperienced, progressive-minded attorneys are following the same playbook, deciding, like Boudin, who had not been a prosecutor before taking office as district attorney, that they’re qualified to operate the complex machinery of a prosecutor’s office. Their efforts threaten to destabilize even further the nation’s tottering criminal-justice system.

In 2019, Boudin replaced George Gascón, another progressive prosecutor, who had decamped to Los Angeles and now serves as district attorney there. The child of convicted murderers from the radical Weather Underground, Boudin had never served as a prosecutor, much less the chief prosecutor for a major city. Instead, he had worked as a translator for the Hugo Chavez administration in Venezuela before attending law school, clerking for a federal judge, and working as a public defender. Upon running for district attorney, Boudin told voters that he intended to stop prosecuting crimes and empty out the jails, respectable goals for a public defender but dubious policies for a DA. Once elected, Boudin delivered on his promises—and crime, homelessness, and disorder have exploded in San Francisco. Boudin now faces a recall election, funded by disgusted citizens and businesses.

Boudin’s tenure should have served as a warning to others that running a district attorney’s office might not be as simple as it looks. A chief prosecutor must be skilled at evaluating cases, reassuring citizens about public safety, coordinating with law enforcement, recruiting and training new prosecutors, handling a budget, interacting with judges, and a million-and-one other actions that affect urban crime. These skills take time to learn and refine.