RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/americas_transgender_craze_.html

Future historians may look back on 2023 as Peak Trans Women insanity. The highly publicized boycott of Bud Light beer over Anheuser-Busch’s choice to feature the trans “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney may have garnered the most publicity, but it is only a small part of this craze. This prominence is particularly visible in the fashion industry, where leading brands such as Chanel, Versace, and Victoria’s Secret now showcase biological men dressed as glamorous women. Even Sports Illustrated, a magazine targeting sports-minded men, once portrayed the transgender model, Leyna Bloom, on its cover. Thirty-sex transgendered women are currently earning a living as fashion models.

While portraying trans women in glossy magazines may attract more notice, more consequential is how biological males are replacing women in sports. It’s hard to know the numbers here, and some estimates put the figures on the low side (e.g., a 100 or so at the college level, five for K-12 ), but the impact extends beyond the raw numbers since biological men frequently dominate and thus deprive biological girls of financial rewards such as college scholarships or trophies.  A gay-oriented website summarizes this pattern with the headline,  “These 20 trans women have won national or international competitions or championships.” Who can forget the mediocre male swimmer Lia Thomas winning swimming championships as a female? Meanwhile, a trans weightlifter competed as a woman in the Olympics. A transgendered athlete recently defeated 14,000 female competitors in the London Marathon.

Far less publicized is that state prisons now contain 5000 men who identify as women while some 1300 are inmates of federal prisons.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-layoffs-jumped-in-march-as-job-openings-fell-3805c6a1

Construction, leisure and hospitality and healthcare cuts drive March increase in layoffs

U.S. job openings dropped to their lowest level in nearly two years in March and layoffs rose sharply, in signs that demand for workers is cooling a year after the Federal Reserve began lifting interest rates to combat inflation.

Layoffs rose to a seasonally adjusted 1.8 million in March from the prior month, up from a revised 1.6 million in February, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The increase was led by job losses in construction, leisure and hospitality and healthcare industries—sectors that have driven job growth in recent months as tech, finance and other white-collar industries cooled.

Employers also reported a seasonally adjusted 9.6 million job openings in March, the Labor Department said Tuesday, a decrease from a revised 10 million openings in February.

Openings reached their lowest level in March since April 2021 and are down from the record 12 million recorded last March. But they remain well above levels before the pandemic and exceed the 5.8 million unemployed people looking for work in March.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com
This essay was prompted by former deputy director of the CIA (2010-2013) Michael Morrell’s interview with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH). In that interview Morell said he had phoned Antony Blinken in October 2020 about the Hunter Biden laptop story, which had appeared in the New York Post on October 14, 2020. A consequence of that call was that a few days before the 2020 election fifty-one former intelligence officers signed a public letter (a letter prepared by Morrell), which claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story had all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation. As those officials have since acknowledged, the letter was written without any evidence of Russian involvement; yet those intelligence officers chose to propagate a false story to help Presidential candidate Joe Biden. Reporters from mainstream media were provided an out from having to follow up on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Integrity, where art thou?

Why, I wondered, would someone with Antony Blinken’s pedigree stoop to such a dirty trick?  At the time he was a senior advisor to the Biden campaign, with hopes of a position in a Biden administration. And why would fifty-one former intelligence officers do something that may have affected the outcome of a Presidential election? Is integrity as rare among Washington’s bureaucracy as it is among elected officials?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19613/harvard-council-on-academic-freedom

It is good that so many professors signed on to it [the Council on Academic Freedom] so quickly. It is bad that it is even needed at a place like Harvard whose motto, Veritas, means truth. But “truth” can be a double-edged sword, especially at a university.

The “truth” can sometimes be the enemy of freedom. When people believe they, and only they, have access to THE TRUTH, they see little need for debate, dialogue, dissent and disagreement. Indeed they regard such contrary views as heresy. That has been the way of many religions over the years as well as numerous ideologies such as communism and fascism.

[T]he real headline is that so many faculty members refused or declined to participate in an organization whose goal is to promote free speech.

The shared perspective [of the Council] is in favor of freedom of speech and academic freedom for all views, no matter how unpopular. The goal is to protect the expression of all views and to protect those who are threatened or sanctioned for expressing them.

Freedom of speech, due process, the right to counsel and other fundamental liberties are in peril…. Remaining silent is often the safest course, so self-censorship has become a widespread tactic among individuals who do not support the political correctness of the day.

The fact that more than 100 Harvard University professors have now joined together in a council on academic freedom is both good news and bad news. The purpose of the group, organized by my colleague and friend Steven Pinker, is to ensure that freedom of speech and academic freedom survive at Harvard. It is good that so many professors signed on to it so quickly. It is bad that it is even needed at a place like Harvard whose motto, Veritas, means truth. But “truth” can be a double-edged sword, especially at a university.