Monthly Archives: January 2026

What is a Man?

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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said under oath at her confirmation hearing that she could not define what a woman is. Now we have a gynecologist, Dr Nisha Verma, Physicians for Reproductive Health Fellow, who also was under oath and who specializes in treating women, saying that she cannot define what a man is. During a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing centered on Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs, Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) asked her—repeatedly—whether men could get pregnant.

Hawley: Do you think that men can get pregnant?
Verma: I hesitated there because I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, or what the goal was. I mean I do take care of patients with different identities, I take care of many women, I take care of people with different identities, and so that’s where I paused. I think…I wasn’t sure where you were going with that.
Hawley: Well, the goal is just the truth, so can men get pregnant?
Verma: Again, the reason I paused there is I’m not really sure what the goal of the question….
Hawley: The goal is just to establish a biological reality. You just said a moment ago that “science and evidence should control, not politics.” So, let’’ just test that proposition. Can men get pregnant?
Verma: I take care of people with many identities, but I take care of many women that can get pregnant. I do take care of people that don’t identify as women….”
Hawley: Can men get pregnant?
Verma: I totally agree, science and evidence should guide medicine….
Hawley: Do science and evidence tell us that men can get pregnant? Biological men—can they get pregnant?
Verma: [Paraphrased by OANN] shifted her strategy, arguing that yes/no questions are “a political tool.”
Hawley: Yes/no questions are about the truth, doctor. Let’s not make a mockery of this proceeding[.]
Verma: [Paraphrased by OANN] accused the congressman of “trying to reduce the complexity” of her patients” experience, then of “conflating male [and] female with men and women.”

On the first part of Verma’s last answer, she’s conflating her patients’ experiences with who her patients are. There’s no doubt her patients’ experiences can get highly complex, whether they’re women or men trying to set themselves up as women, however sincerely the latter. There’s nothing complex, though, about who her patients are; that’s a simple, binary matter: her patients are either women, or they’re men. That’s the simple, straightforward biology of the matter.

Verma’s determined refusal to answer Hawley’s simple question is her confession that she cannot define what a man is. Of course, as I noted above, women are her specialty, and a la Brown Jackson, she’s not a specialist in maleness.

Too Typical

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors had it down pat in their editorial of last Wednesday. The opening sentence of their lede laid it out:

As federal pandemic largesse ebbs, Democratic-run states are eyeing higher taxes rather than reform spending programs.

The rest of their piece expanded on that theme.

Nor does it get any clearer than this bit. In a nation overrun with Federal debt and with Progressive-Democrat-run States joining in on climbing the forest of trees in their world on which money grows, Progressive-Democratic Party politicians still cannot even conceive of cutting spending. Nor do they feel the need to; it’s not like they’re spending their own money. It’s all OPM.

Now it’s Rhode Island that’s fixing to get up into one of those trees. Rhode Island is another of those Progressive-Democrat-run States, this one with a Progressive-Democrat governor, a 38-seat Senate containing 33 Progressive-Democrats, and a 75-seat House filled with 65 Progressive-Democrats.

This is what we can expect nationwide if Party wins control of the House and Senate this fall, and it’ll get far worse if Pary wins the White House in the 2028 election cycle.

Trump and a Chinese Idiom

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Walter Russell Mead’s Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed opened with this subheadline:

For him [President Donald Trump (R)], extreme volatility and risk are not a problem but an opportunity.

Here’s an old and hoary Chinese idiom:

危機

These characters, 危 + 機 in their combination translate to Crisis, and the term is composed of characters meaning Danger + Opportunity

Mead’s piece expands on his theme of President Donald Trump’s (R) use of volatility and risk, but that’s just another way of saying, in Western diction, that Chinese idiom. The only difference between the two is whether the deviation is imposed from the outside or it’s created by deliberately deviating.

That idiom, and the Western rephrasing of volatility and risk, are essentially correct. Gains are not made without taking the underlying risks of deviating from the status quo. Great gains are possible only with making great deviations. Both Crisis and Volatility and Risk are those opportunities from great deviations.

Those who fear crisis or volatility and risk to the point of paralysis seek to have the rest of us similarly paralyzed lest they be left behind.

Misunderstanding?

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors laid out their “misunderstanding” in the opening sentence of their lede of their Sunday editorial.

Does a biological boy who transitions to become a girl have a constitutional right to compete in girls’ sports?

No, this is no mere misunderstanding; even a journalist knows better than this. It’s a deliberate distortion, which these editors are dishonestly presenting as established fact.

The fact that these…persons…are trying to steer us away from is that gender is immutable, and it is established at the moment a sperm unites with an egg and the genetic combination of XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes are established.

No amount of surgery and/or hormonal treatments can transition a boy into a girl; those actions can only alter his appearance. His genetic makeup remains untouched: he’s still a boy, regardless of what he looks like.

Contradictory and Foolish

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The lede lays it out, with Valero, California’s major refinery operator, at the center of the contradiction and foolishness.

A refining company proceeding with its plans to idle its gasoline refinery in California announced Tuesday it will help out California consumers by importing gasoline, which will help shore up the state’s dwindling supply.

The refining company is Valero, and it’s being forced to close its refinery by California’s hostile regulatory environment for oil and natural gas production and for gasoline and ICE engine-powered vehicles in particular. The contradiction is Valero’s decision to close its gasoline-producing refinery as no longer economically viable while deciding to import gasoline from outside the State.

The foolishness is Valero’s decision to import gasoline into the State after closing its refinery in the State.

As Tim Stewart, US Oil and Gas Association President, put it as quoted by Just the News,

Governor Newson trumpeting his leadership is like the captain of a sinking ship taking credit for handing out life jackets after he’s crashed the ferry on the rocks. It was the lack of leadership on energy policy that got California to this point….

It’s not entirely Newsom’s fault, though; he had help from his Progressive-Democrat-run State legislature, which passed the laws he signed, and from his regulators, who wrote the implementing regulations.

Much more than that, though, the fault lies with California’s citizens. If those folks really were concerned about their gasoline availability and pricing and their ICE vehicles, they’d stop electing representatives and governors who are overtly hostile to gasoline and local production of gasoline supplies and to ICE vehicles.