Go Ahead On

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A person asked MarketWatch whether it would be all right to wear a MAGA hat to work, given that some coworkers had worn Kamala pins to work. Quentin Fottrell’s response was weak. He began with this:

You may be seeking likeminded coworkers, but you could end up creating division instead.

Not at all. Any division associated with wearing the hat or those Kamala pins is “created” solely by the political hysterics who manufacture objection to anything they don’t personally approve.

Then he added this, after a long dissertation on matters only tangentially related:

For you, a MAGA hat could mean more secure borders, but to someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum, it could represent an anti-immigration stance. Similarly, for you it may represent Trump’s survival after he was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet, but to a coworker it could bring to mind that the president-elect is, whether you agree with the verdict or not, a convicted felon.

That’s Fottrell’s—and those “others'”—dependence on the Left’s Newspeak Dictionary definition, and his projection of that definition onto the questioner. The actual definition, from American English dictionaries is simply Make America Great Again. Despite Fottrell’s claim, the hat and the slogan mean only support for Trump and for America, neither more nor less. Characterizations of Trump based on that, it bears repeating, are merely figments of the imaginations of political hysterics.

Then Fottrell closed with this:

Don’t jeopardize your paycheck or workplace harmony. You would miss either one after it’s gone.

The former, maybe, if there are actual employer repercussions, which would be illegal, whether or not resisted. Fottrell misunderstood the latter though: the existence of the question demonstrates that the harmony already is absent.

The questioner should go ahead on and wear the hat. On the other hand, it’s foolish to be provocative for provocation’s sake. Maybe the questioner could stick to Trump-supporting jewelry on a scale similar to those Kamala pins or use a Trump-supporting coffee mug.

A Fatuous Argument

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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week concerning a Tennessee law that bans transgender medical procedures for minors. In the course of that session, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made this argument favoring striking the law:

…racial classifications and inconsistencies. I’m thinking in particular about Loving v Virginia [which struck, on 14th Amendment grounds State laws banning interracial marriage], and I’m wondering whether you thought about the parallels, because I see one as to how this statute operates and how the anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia operated.

This is just Brown Jackson’s attempt to claim a discrimination based on sex, which would make the law harder to sustain. The argument that the Tennessee ban is based on sex discrimination is risible on its face, since regardless of the life style chosen or the drugs and surgeries engaged in to support that life style, the individual remains the male or female he or she was conceived as all those months prior to birth.

Her false equivalence is silly. Trending Politics‘ Collin Rugg:

Yes, because banning a white person from marrying a black person is the same thing as cutting off a 10-year-old’s gen*tals.

Keep in mind, though, that this is the same woman who, at her confirmation hearing, was completely unable to say what a woman is.

RFK, Jr, and Vaccines

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Robert F Kennedy, Jr, the HHS Secretary nominee, has a strong reputation as an anti-vaccine…person. That reputation may or may not be justified; he is skeptical of them. Related to that, his reputation for opposing to GLP-1 drugs also may or may not be justified. However, taking the particular case of those GLP-1 drugs, Kennedy’s actual position is obscured by this bit of journalist editorial foolishness:

[H]e thinks Americans should eat healthier and exercise to lose weight. That’s fine as far as it goes. But neither exercise nor dietary changes will cure diabetes, and hormonal changes make it difficult for severely obese patients to lose weight without medical interventions.

Both diet and exercise are Critical Items for the health of all of us, and particularly so for diabetics. These won’t cure diabetes? I’m aware of no one who claims they do. There is, though, a rapidly growing anecdotal body of evidence that changes in diet—particularly regarding carbohydrate intake in general and grains more specifically—do in fact beneficially alter individuals’ hormonal environment and mitigate, sometimes eliminate, the effects of diabetes. Those especially morbidly obese may well still need drugs, potentially of the GLP-1 variety, after having improved their diet and exercise regimens.

Or reducing/eliminating carbs, including grains, may not have any general population effect. Government bureaucrats with medical degrees need to get out of the way of science and let the research proceed to confirmation or refutation.

Is diabetes curable by diet and exercise? Probably not, but the metabolic health outcomes cannot be ignored by serious medically-oriented scientists. On the other hand, journalist editorial writings, especially when done completely absent any presentation of data supporting editors’ claims, can be ignored. And yes, that includes editors’ skepticism regarding political nominees whose positions might differ from the editors’.

“Numbers Under the Hood”

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David Plouffe is a highly talented politician and political advisor, and he was a top aide to the Harris campaign. He says the cardinal sin of the Progressive-Democratic Party (my term, not Plouffe’s) this time around was in not having a primary to select a replacement for Joe Biden in the just concluded campaign and election.

Leave aside his eliding the fact that Party already had eschewed primaries early last winter when they actively blocked primary challengers to Biden, allowing even a token challenge only ‘way late in the primary season.

The more important part of Plouffe’s claim is this:

When I got in, it was the first time I saw the actual numbers under the hood. … [D]emographically, young voters across the board—Hispanic voters, Black voters, Asian voters—were in really terrible shape.

Young voters, those Hispanic, black, and Asian voters were in terrible shape. That was because they were switching in large percentages, and in smaller but significant percentages, away from Party and toward the Republican Party and Republican and Conservative candidates.

What utter oblivious arrogance. What deep contempt for us American citizens. Wait, a reader might say. He meant the polling figures, that’s what he meant.

No, he didn’t. Words are this talented politician’s and advisor’s stock in trade. If he’d meant that, he would have said that. Instead, he said what he said, and that’s what he so clearly meant.

This is Party’s arrogant contempt for us, and we need to be thoroughly wary of it in the next several elections.

Absolutely

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Regarding Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s nakedly hypocritical pardon of his son for all crimes committed or maybe committed from 2014 forward to just a couple days ago, there’s an expectation that this closes the books on the Hunter Biden situation, and all investigations are expected to be ended forthwith.

One Senator, though, demurs from that last bit. Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD):

President Biden repeatedly lied to the American people. This pardon, and the repeated lies the president and his administration told about it, will be a shameful bookend to President Biden’s tenure in office, and I would be supportive of Congress continuing to look into allegations of corrupt behavior[.]

It’s good to see at least one politician in a position of influence who thinks like I do.