May 19, 2024
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR NEW ZEALAND: Transgender 18-year-old attempts surgery on himself at home due to lack of access.
A transgender young person’s attempt to perform top surgery on himself is a clear result of historical underfunding and inequitable access to gender affirming healthcare, an expert says.
The 18-year-old turned up at an emergency department after attempting to perform a bi-lateral mastectomy, also known as top surgery, at home. He was several hours through the procedure when he became concerned he would cause nerve damage.
The case was published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday and was described as an “act of desperation”.
The young person was facing long wait times for a surgery referral in the public health system and was unable to afford to go private – which can cost up to $35,000.
“This is a clear result of the historical underfunding and inequitable access to gender affirming care around the country,” said Jennifer Shields, president of the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA).
“Research shows that gender affirming hormones and surgeries are essential for the wellbeing of many trans people,” she said.
When does New Zealand get its version of the Cass Report?
DEVELOPING: Iranian President’s Helicopter Suffers ‘Accident’ or ‘Incident’ — Either Way, It Went Down.
UPDATE:
My thoughts are with the @washingtonpost obituary team in this difficult time as they fiercely debate whether to call Ebrahim Raisi an “austere religious scholar”, a “patriotic anti-Zionist leader” or a “zealous anti-corruption crusader”.
— Gabriel Noronha (@GLNoronha) May 19, 2024
UPDATE (5:27 pm): It’s not an obit, since there’s no official word yet, but currently, the WaPo is going with “protégé and trusted confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi was elected president in 2021 after a decorated career as an ultraconservative in Iran’s judiciary.”
No mention of the many executions that Raisi signed off on. Even the House of Stephanopoulos is noting that in the late 1980s, “International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Raisi served on the commissions.”
UPDATE (6:05 pm): If Raisi Is Dead: Implications for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
DOES THAT REALLY COUNT AS A “RETURN?” Chevy Camaro Could Return as a Fun-to-Drive Electric Car, GM President Says.
INCREASE YOUR GRIP: Grip Strength Tester Trainer – Dynamometer Handgrip Measurer. #CommissionEarned Glenn and I just used one of these, I have a sad grip strength but his was super strong. You can use this gadget to practice increasing your grip.
ICYMI: Ex Marine Arrested For Planning Murder Spree in ‘Gun-Free’ Zones ‘In the White Community,’
His motivation comes straight out of Critical Race Theory: “I want to cause mayhem on the white community. The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles. Same way I will never understand their struggles, but I don’t care to. I want to erase them. All of them really, but in this case as many as I possibly can.”
This kind of thinking comes directly out of our universities, the toxic output of a toxic industry.
FIND YOUR PHONE: Apple AirTag 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned
THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF BEZOS: The Washington Post’s Disgrace.
In that chat, several people pressed Adams to send the New York Police Department to clear out Columbia University’s dangerous, disgraceful, and violent pro-Hamas encampment, something that did not happen until student reprobates further escalated the situation and broke into and occupied a campus building several days later.
The Post surfaces no evidence—zero—to indicate there is any connection between the demands made in the chat and the cops’ appearance at Columbia, since the decision, of course, was left to Columbia University’s weak-kneed president Minouche Shafik.
A spokeswoman for the newspaper declined to comment, and the paper did not publish the piece in its print version on Friday.
Maybe this is why. “The messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war,” the reporters write ominously. Get it? The piece is a modern-day echo of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in which Woodward and Bernstein—er, Natanson and Felton—mimic the uncovering of a secret plot.
We hope you’re sitting down, because the Post reveals that several of the billionaires also “worked with the Israeli government” to screen film footage of the Oct. 7 massacre compiled by the IDF and one of them, the hedge funder Bill Ackman, even facilitated its screening at Harvard.
And as Jeff Jacoby notes, the WaPo has made one of their periodic reminders that they’re simply Democratic Party activists with bylines: A cynical Washington Post tells Biden: Nothing matters more than beating Trump.
Of course the Times leans well to the left and many of its journalists revile Trump. All the more reason, then, for Kahn to emphasize that it is not the newspaper’s responsibility to ensure a Republican defeat. The Times may — the Times does — often fail to resist its liberal bias. Nonetheless, its highest-ranking news editor deserves credit for articulating the principle that the paper ought to uphold.
Now consider the principle articulated by The Washington Post opinion section.
Last week, the Post’s editorial board — which speaks with the institutional voice of the newspaper — declared that it regards President Biden’s reelection in November as a matter of such importance that it will not fault him for promoting misbegotten policies that are designed to attract votes. The president’s policies “clearly pander to core constituencies,” the editorial board conceded, and “some of these policies are quite bad — even dangerous.” Other pandering by the White House may be “less obviously dangerous but still violates common sense and principle.”
For example, the Post cites the president’s refusal to approve a ban on menthol cigarettes. The editorial board has strongly supported such a ban, which it maintains would save tens of thousands of mostly Black lives. But as a political matter, it knows that if the White House were to issue the ban, the Democrats would lose a significant number of voters “whom Mr. Biden can ill afford to alienate in this close election.” And since “Mr. Trump’s reelection is the kind of nightmare scenario any responsible politician would go to great lengths to prevent,” the Post concludes that it is responsible, or at least acceptable, for Biden to let those deaths occur rather than weaken his odds of reelection. “Democrats are scrapping for every vote,” the editorial asserts, so this is no time to be fastidious about matters of principle, or about right and wrong.
In a lifetime of newspaper reading, I have never encountered an editorial so cynical in its willingness to discard any principle other than to win at all costs. “Trim your principles, Democrats, and pander away,” the Post advises Biden and his party. To “play Machiavelli” isn’t the worst thing, it says — the worst thing is “losing.”
Or as Matt Taibbi wrote in December: Democracy Dies in Daylight: Eight years ago the Washington Post pledged to save democracy, but now argues we need to be saved from it.
UPDATE: NYT Carrying Biden’s Water — This ‘Article’ Is Like a Press Release.
In 2005, Editor & Publisher casually noted, “Welcome to life under the Washington Post-New York Times swap. As part of a secret arrangement formed more than 10 years ago, the Post and Times send each other copies of their next day’s front pages every night,” so I can’t say it’s surprising to see the Gray Lady also working so blatantly to advance Biden’s reelection bid.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Biden Compares MAGA Republicans to 1950s-Era Segregationists.
But as Matt [Margolis] points out in his excellent piece on blacks and polls, black voters over 50 are more susceptible to the machinations of Democrats trying to scare black voters with visions of hooded whites coming for them.
Matt points out that “recent polling shows that black voters 50 years old and older still back Biden 82% to 8%. However, younger black voters, between 18 and 49 years old, a stunning 25% support Donald Trump.”
Joe Biden spoke on Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture to an audience largely made up of older black voters and raised the specter of segregationists hoping to stampede black voters to vote for him.
Biden recalled his meeting with the “Little Rock Nine” and tried to tie MAGA Republicans with the segregationists that opposed them.
“The Little Rock Nine were met with vitriol and violence. Today the vitriol comes in other insidious forms—an extreme movement led by my predecessor and his MAGA Republican allies, backed by an extreme Supreme Court that gutted affirmative action in college admissions. My predecessor and his extreme MAGA friends are now going after diversity, equity and inclusion all across America,” Biden said. “They want a country for some —not for all.”
Biden has no business criticizing MAGA for being segregationists. As a congressman in the 1970s, Biden fiercely resisted busing and school desegregation.
And how: Speaking of George Wallace…:
But since Obama brought it up, it’s worth noting that the only person in modern American politics to have repeatedly praised Wallace and other segregationists is Joe Biden. It was Biden who bragged that in 1973 Wallace considered him “one of the outstanding young politicians of America.” It was Biden who wrote in 1975 that the “Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace.” It was Biden who in 1981 told a black witness in the Senate that “sometimes even George Wallace is right.” It was Biden who, while campaigning for the presidency in Alabama in 1987, claimed that he’d been the recipient of an award from Wallace in 1973 (it probably wasn’t true; but what a thing to brag about!), and then boasted that Delaware was “on the South’s side in the Civil War.”
“Biden was also buddies with J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a segregationist and anti-Semite who would later become a mentor to the Clintons.”
As well as another fellow Democrat, Robert Byrd: Herschel Walker says ‘Democrats do not like America’ and slams media for not grilling Joe Biden over his friendship with former KKK member-turned senator Robert Byrd.
Not to mention this former aficionado of blackface:
Then there was Biden’s terrible optics in 2022, when he modeled himself after the ultimate segregationist:
And while Biden is busy trashing “MAGA Republicans,” in the past he was eager to attack their predecessors as well, using similarly hyperbolic language.
Flashback to 2012: Biden: Romney’s approach to financial regulation will ‘put y’all back in chains.’
And a flashback to 2011, when Biden called Tea Party members “terrorists.”
IT’S JUST ONE MORE SCIENCELESS ECO-FAD: There’s little science behind ‘No Mow May.’. One more of many.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA:
Oakland is now replacing traffic lights with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from Oakland's electrical boxes: pic.twitter.com/Y2lFQ8BJsM
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 19, 2024
Oakland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1977.
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: God Baffled That Democrats Managed To Ruin California. “‘You guys were literally given everything! How do you even do that?’ said a spokesangel for the Almighty. ‘You have perfect weather, beautiful coastline, great surfing, skiing in the mountains, fish tacos, rolling vineyards, the list goes on. How on earth did you manage to take the most beautiful stretch of land on God’s earth and turn it into a huge dump? It doesn’t make any sense.’”
MICROBIOME NEWS: Gut bacteria enhance cancer immunotherapy in mouse study.
IT’S AN ELECTION YEAR, SO ASSUME THEY’RE JUST GETTING STARTED: Anti-Israel uprisings hit dangerous new extreme in Michigan.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SPREAD PRE-ELECTION FEAR, THEN? Expert explains how pasteurization protects against avian flu.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The AI ‘concierge’ that will decide who you date.
Dating app users may soon be able to avoid awkward meet-ups with potential partners by using AI “concierges” to do the dating for them.
Users would have an AI avatar programmed with their “interests, likes, dislikes, even conversation habits”, said Glamour, and this bot would chat with other users’ bots to see if “the two real people behind the bots might be a good match”.