Tag Archives: responsibilities

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.

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.

“Multicultural”

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A news writer for The New York Times, Peter Baker, in typical journalism guild, misstated American culture in an interview with the left-wing network PBS‘ Washington Week With the Atlantic, as excerpted by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the things that they’ve [the Trump administration] been very successful at, and I would expect to see more of, is their war on DEI, on the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion, the notion that diversity is an admirable goal, even if you don’t necessarily want quotas. They have managed in just a very short amount of time to create a new culture in the country—not just in the government, across the board—where private employers feel the need to retreat from DEI. And you’re going to see, I think, an acceleration of that in the second year…. I think the question, though, is in a multicultural country, at some point does that begin to go too far for people and by the midterms?

Leave aside Baker’s blithe assumption that there’s nothing intrinsically racist or sexist in DEI, which favors approved races and the approved gender at the direct, deliberate expense of disapproved races and the disapproved gender. Those favoring criteria, however far down the selection tree they might be, are explicitly and by design racist and sexist.

More than that, the United States is not a mix of race, of old-world cultures, of religions, or of whathaveyous. The Unites States is a nation of a single culture, one unified by a common belief in a basic system of intrinsic rights: to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness and of a limited government granted to which by our nation’s sovereign citizens only enough power and authority to protect those intrinsic and basic rights.

Baker’s bald claim that the United States is a multicultural country is as cynical as it is wrong.

Even that queen of European identity politics, Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, ultimately recognized that multiculturalism is an abject failure. And that’s something that Americans have known since our inception, if unevenly put or kept in effect.

“News” Media Arrogance Personified

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The lede demonstrates this “news” reader and opinionator Katie Couric’s personal arrogance in presenting what she’s pleased to call “journalism.”:

Katie Couric spoke out against “bothsidesism” in news coverage and insisted people don’t want “just the facts” in the current media environment.

Yes, we do. We want, even though “news”…presenters…don’t want us to hear, all the facts, even though Couric’s presenters prefer to provide only those that suit the presenters’ predetermined narrative. We object strongly to censored presentations, a censorship and bias that’s revealed by what facts are withheld as much as by what facts are selected for reporting.

We don’t mind biased, opinionated commentary, but we expect it to be in carefully labeled opinion pieces, not opinions masqueraded as fact in what is alleged to be news reporting. And, we expect even opinionated commentary to be informed by logic and facts, not hype or hyperbole. Couric again:

So what I try to do, and what we try to do, is help people stay abreast of everything that’s happening, which is increasingly difficult given the velocity of things that are thrown at us primarily by this administration. But try to understand and give them some perspective and context and help explain in some cases why people need to be aware and concerned about some of the things that are happening in this country.

Pick one. You can’t help us “stay abreast of everything that’s happening” when you insist on no ” bothsidesism,” when you insist on only presenting one side. [T]ry to understand and give [us] some perspective and context and help explain?

This is Couric insulting our intelligence. If she had the integrity to present all of the facts, we’d be able to understand for ourselves, to see for ourselves the perspective. We’re not stupid, as she so plainly says we are. Especially when she says she tries to give us some context when, with her own words, she withholds context by presenting only those facts she’s carefully selected for presentation. That contradiction is especially insulting to our intelligence.

And there’s Couric’s precious self-importance, her velocity of things that are thrown at us as though she and her cronies are the audience of any administration’s, much less the current one’s, actions. Couldn’t be that us citizens are the audience.

This is why the so-called news media—both reporting and opinionating—are so distrusted by so many of us.

They All Look Alike? Really?

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In touting an endorsement by Jasmine Crockett, who is a Texas Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman and Senate candidate, of a California Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Congress, California Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva (D) used this imagery.

To the vast majority of us, it’s plain that the image labeled Jasmine Crockett is not an image of Crockett. There’s not even a hint of resemblance, other than that it’s an image of a black woman. And it was offered by a liberal white woman* in typical white female liberal savior fashion. That Quirk-Silva didn’t even recognize her “mistake” until queried by Fox News is instructive.

It is possible that this…error…didn’t flow from any “all blacks look alike” racism. Maybe it flowed, instead, from the “all blacks are politically monolithic so any black image will do” racism.

*To clarify, based on Quirk-Silva’s name: born Sharon D Howard, she acquired her family name from her first marriage to Shawn Quirk and, following divorce, her current marriage to Jesus Silva. Her decision to hyphenate on her two married names is her own.