Archive for 2018

#WARONWOMEN: BIOLOGICAL MALE WINS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN WOMEN’S CYCLING. I’m torn, as these losing women — with breasts and everything — have to pose like good sports with a “woman” who looks just like a fairly muscular man. On the other hand, I read the story and it sounds like a colossal trolling effort:

McKinnon in January was quoted in USA Today arguing against requiring biological males to suppress testosterone as a requirement for competing against women. (RELATED: High-School Boy Wins All-State Honors In Girls Track And Field)

“We cannot have a woman legally recognized as a trans woman in society, and not be recognized that way in sports,” McKinnon told USA Today.

“Focusing on performance advantage is largely irrelevant because this is a rights issue. We shouldn’t be worried about trans people taking over the Olympics. We should be worried about their fairness and human rights instead.”

McKinnon also compared restrictions on biological males competing in women’s events to racial segregation.

“This is bigger than sports, and it’s about human rights,” McKinnon said to USA Today.

“By catering to cisgender people’s views, that furthers transgender people’s oppression. When it comes to extending rights to a minority population, why would we ask the majority? I bet a lot of white people were pissed off when we desegregated sports racially and allowed black people. But they had to deal with it.”

Anyway, you get what you put up with, and female athletes are willing to put up with this. All for fear of a surprisingly small number of people willing to yell and scream and demand the firing of anyone who disagrees, and the surprisingly large number of people willing to be cowed by them. And if this is a trolling effort, well . . . first rate job!

FOX BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Despite Taylor Swift’s Endorsement of Bredesen, Blackburn Up Big in TN.

Related: Taylor Swift Should Put Her Tax Money Where Her Mouth Is. Why claim residency in Tennessee, especially if, in Taylor Swift’s words, red-state policies don’t represent ‘MY Tennessee values?’

UPDATE: Perhaps this headline explains why Blackburn is ahead: Bredesen Spokesman: ‘Gun Nuts’ Are ‘Biggest Terrorist Organization on The Planet.’

To paraphrase the legendary fictitious rock manager Ian Faith, Bredesen really shouldn’t worry about it though — it’s not like Tennessee is a big Second Amendment state.

(Bumped; classical reference in headline.)

OPEN THREAD: Share in the universal good fellowship that marks the InstaPundit comment section.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: The World Keeps Not Ending.

So why the mass hysteria?

The argument from our Democratic friends is that these are not normal political times, that current events present a unique threat to our institutions, a clear and present danger, and, hence, that the normal rules of civility must be abandoned, as Mrs. Clinton insists, that norms of civilized behavior and citizenship must be overthrown, as with the mobs chasing political enemies out of restaurants and stalking them in their homes, that honorable public servants must be traduced in the face of this emergency, etc.

All of that would be more compelling if the Left had not said the same thing and made the same exaggerated and hysterical claims during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (they were sure he would cause the nuclear annihilation of all life on earth) and George W. Bush (He’ll peep at your library records!), if they had not attempted to do to Mitt Romney more or less the same thing they attempted to do to Brett Kavanaugh. Among reasonable people, the market for wolf tickets is getting pretty saturated. There aren’t any death camps being set up in the suburbs.

One begins to suspect that the same people who insisted that things in these United States could hardly have been better in November of 2016 and that they could hardly have been worse two months later are not acting entirely in good faith.

Read the whole thing.

MORAL POLLUTION IN PLACE OF REASONED CRITIQUE: At Quillette, Pamela Paresky, chief researcher and in-house editor for The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt quotes a passage from their new book predicting how its authors would be attacked by identity politics-obsessed critics, and then notes that the “Grauniad” chose just that response:

In fact, we can make a prediction right now, while writing this book in 2017: Most of the negative reviews and responses to this book will at some point note our race and gender and then directly assert or vaguely hint that we are racists or sexists who are motivated primarily by the desire to preserve our privilege. We will then respond in the spirit of Mark Lilla, the author of a critique of identity politics titled The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, an avowed liberal who wrote his book to help the Democrats start winning elections, responds to repeated name-calling by saying, essentially, “That is a slur, not an argument. Make an argument and I’ll respond to it.”

So far, The Coddling of the American Mind has received generally positive reviews from writers on the Left, Right, and center. A notable exception is a review by Moira Weigel titled “How Elite US Liberals Have Turned Rightwards.” It appeared in the Guardian, and illustrated the tactics we predicted.

A Fisking ensues, which is well worth reading.

WILLIAM A. JACOBSON’S LEGAL INSURRECTION IS 10 YEARS OLD: “I’m feeling a little more optimistic now, and have dialed back the Dread Clock… I did not know at the time the Dread Clock was dialed back that the nominee would be Brett Kavanaugh, or that the Democrats would engage in a months-long smear campaign at the level of dishonesty and fury at which it was fought.”

Read the whole thing.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Guy with re-enacting business supports Trump on social media. Anti-Trump people inside and outside of school districts launch boycott of his business. Response: A civil rights lawsuit. Looks pretty good to me. (Bumped).

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FAKE NEWS AND THE PRESS AREN’T DEMOCRATS WITH BYLINES: Remember the furor over Trump saying Robert E. Lee was a great general? Reported with great disdain by NBC, CNN, et al.?

Well, two days later, NBC corrects.