A Month Away
Trump Finds His Willie Horton?
So I’m watching the Mets’ glorious opening win against the Phillies yesterday and my pleasure is interrupted four times—four timex—by a Donald Trump ad in which Kamala Harris blithely tells an interviewer that she’s in favor of sex-change procedures for prisoners, paid by the state. This is accompanied by photos of several such miscreants—and one non-miscreant, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, who is a trans person. My first reaction was: this is too hilarious to be real. Paying for prisoners to get sex change procedures? Only the twisted mind of Donald Trump could come up with something like that. Democrats aren’t that crazy.
But it is real.
Harris did support taxpayer-paid sex change procedures for prisoners—and she said it on television. This is somewhere well beyond stupid. But it is where the Democratic Party has all too often lived, on the fringes of the faddish extremism of the lifestyle left. It’s bad enough that you can’t get Harris to say sex change procedures should only be permitted for those people who reach the legal voting age of 18. It’s bad enough that there’s growing evidence that many of these fad-disasters for unhappy young people turn out to be premature decisions. It’s much worse that these procedures should be free for lawbreakers and paid by the public—apparently on the exceedingly flimsy grounds that the Constitution requires necessary health care for prisoners. I can think of instances where gender transition is a good thing; I’ve known a few people like that; I’m happy they had that option. (I’m thinking of my old Rolling Stone colleague, the brilliant Jan Morris.) But necessary? Perhaps in cases where hormone treatment has already begun and needs to be maintained. But still… Do the Dems really want to lose an election—at the tiny margins that currently exist—because of an issue like this? Did Kamala really have to answer that question? This is political suicide by dilettante indulgence. Yikes.
A Slam Dunk…Missed
David Ignatius has a good column about the very real threats on Donald Trump’s life—from Iran. This should be an opportunity for the Democrats and for the United States. Joe Biden should state, in no uncertain terms, that if Iran makes an attempt on Donald Trump’s life, we will respond with extreme disproportionate force. He should say it angrily, with steam coming out of his ears. Kamala Harris should say it, too; in fact she should say it first. Why is it so hard for Democrats to understand strength?
The Klein Fever Barometer
We’re a month out. In most election years, I start acting intemperate, irritable and crazy about now. I have apologized repeatedly to Sanity Goddess about this in the past—and pre-apologized in advance for any testiness this year. (She’s feeling pretty anxious about the election herself.)
So, in order to control my nutter-butter ugliness, I will try to manage my neuroses through a chart: a ten-point optimism scale. I have friends who know a lot about politics who are very optimistic about the chances of defeating Trump this. year. I have other friends who are entirely pessimistic. I’ve been in the Sane—well, not so sane—center on the subject for most of the year, feigning calm…And so the first reading of the Klein Fever Barometer (KFB) is: 5.
I’ll probably write something most days between now and the election, and the KFB will be sensitive to every twitch. Commenters are free to offer their own barometric readings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/04/trump-iran-assassination-risk/
I recommend The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls by Kara Dansky https://g.co/kgs/jhoMkwN
Signed, former Democrat Voter all my life Gen X mom of ROGD trans identified young woman. This is a social contagion and one of the biggest medical scandals. Wake up Democrats!
I'm an (elderly) biomedical researcher, so I encounter corners of contemporary lunacy unsuspected by most. The following is a point written by the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), quite a reputable publication, in response to a research submission that had largely completed and passed the peer review process:
6. Language around gender:
(a) In keeping with CMAJ reporting policies, given that you have analyzed population data that do not appear to include information on gender identity, please use “birthing parents” rather than “women” or “mothers”, “characteristics of the birthing parent” rather than “paternal characteristics”, and “characteristics of the non-birthing parent” rather than “paternal characteristics” (assuming this is correct – see below).
(b) With regard to “paternal” data, please clarify: do your data sources capture data on the biological father of the neonate (including, for example, pregnancies achieved through surrogacy or assisted reproduction), or do they instead capture data on the non-birthing parent of the neonate (who may not be male or identify as a man)?