Biden is really slurring today (again) pic.twitter.com/VxJBMTTU9Z
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 17, 2024
To paraphrase a well-known bit of good advice: Sit down, Joe. You’re senile.
The principal candidates in the Republican primary, which is tomorrow, are Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno and state senator Matt Dolan. As of today, Moreno holds a nine-point lead in at least one poll.
Four days ago the Associated Press, presumably pursuant to its anti-MAGA mania, released a story accusing Moreno of having created a gay account on the Adult Friend Finder web site in 2008:
Moreno — who has shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ rights to a hardline opponent — is confronting questions about the existence of a 2008 profile seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex” on a casual sexual encounters website called Adult Friend Finder.
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The AP review confirmed that someone with access to Moreno’s email account created the profile, though the AP could not definitively confirm whether it was created by Moreno himself.
A man named Dan Ricci, who was working as an intern for Moreno in 2008, has said publicly that he created the account, using Moreno’s email address as a joke:
On Thursday evening, two days after the AP first asked Moreno’s campaign about the account, the candidate’s lawyer said a former intern created the account as a prank. The lawyer provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”
“I am thoroughly embarrassed by an aborted prank I pulled on my friend, and former boss, Bernie Moreno, nearly two decades ago,” Ricci said.
You might wonder whether this is all worth an 11th-hour Associated Press story, but the AP tried to shore up the claim that Moreno created the profile with a scientific-sounding claim:
Beyond the work email, the profile lists Moreno’s correct date of birth, while geolocation data indicates that the account was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time.
The AP has now admitted, however, that its claim about “geolocation data” is false; all it means is that the person who created the profile entered a Fort Lauderdale zip code.
Enter Andrew Conru, the founder of Adult Friend Finder, who brought a little sanity to the story:
That is the world we live in: the founder of an adult dating site brings more coherence and integrity to the story than the Associated Press.
But that still leaves the question, how good a candidate is Bernie Moreno? Check this out:
Trump endorsed OH Senate candidate Bernie Moreno at Trump rally today says when they get to Heaven they will get to meet the 55 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, including James Madison and Abraham Lincoln. pic.twitter.com/1dE7ucNucy
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 16, 2024
Moreno is being abused for thinking that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington signed the Declaration. Actually, none of the people he mentioned were signers. I think he meant that if you go to Heaven, you will get to meet the 55 signers of the Declaration, and also men like Lincoln et al. I hope that is what he meant, anyway. I still yearn for the day when the Republicans can nominate candidates about whom we don’t have to discuss things like Adult Friend Finder and whether Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration of Independence.
Although a biological male, Cooper seeks to compete with the ladies. Cooper alleges that USAP’s refusal to yield to his self-identification as a woman violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act and Judge Diamond agreed.
Physical strength lies at the core of weightlifting. Men are stronger than women. Treating men as women destroys the competition. It is absurd.
Ramsey County District Judge Patrick Diamond disagreed. Judge Diamond — he is no gem. He held that USA Powerlifting mistreated Cooper under the terms of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. All that remained to be determined were damages. He granted injunctive relief of his own accord.
USA Powerlifting filed an interlocutory appeal of Judge Diamond’s injunction and determination of liability under the MHRA. Today the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed Judge Diamond, holding that “there are genuine issues of material fact with respect to Cooper’s claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation (which is defined by statute to include transgender status)” and “that there are genuine issues of material fact with respect to USAPL’s statutory legitimate-business-purpose defense to Cooper’s claims of discrimination in business.”
This is a 2-1 decision. Judge Jennifer Frisch concurred in part and dissented in part from the panel decision by Judge Matthew Johnson. Judge Frisch agrees with Cooper on the merits of his claims. I think she is out to lunch in a world of her own.
The panel opinions are posted here. I can only say I hope the Minnesota Supreme Court lets the Court of Appeals decision stand.
Ansis Viksnins represents USA Powerlifting. He is an old acquaintance who has patiently answered my questions about this unreal case along the way. I asked him for a statement on the Court of Appeals decision today. Ansis responded:
We are pleased that the appellate court corrected the serious mistakes made in the lower court and has provided us an opportunity to tell our side of the story to a Ramsey County jury. USA Powerlifting did not exclude JayCee Cooper from the women’s category because of her gender identity. USA Powerlifting excluded her from competing in the women’s division because of her physiology: she was born biologically male and USAPL does not allow athletes who went through male puberty to compete in the women’s division.
Maintaining separate categories based on sex, age, and weight is necessary so that similarly situated athletes are competing in appropriate categories and have fair opportunities of success. Scientific studies show that athletes who have gone through male puberty enjoy a large strength advantage over athletes who go through puberty as a female. The scientific studies also show that suppressing testosterone only reduces the strength advantage by a very minimal amount. Because powerlifting is a strength sport, the strength differences between competitors who were born male and those who were born female are significant. Today’s decision is a victory for fairness in sports.
Even before the Star Tribune got around to reporting Judge Diamond’s decision last year, it published Minnesota Lynx president Cheryl Reeve’s op-ed column celebrating it. Reeve omitted any discussion of the possible participation of male trans athletes in the WNBA.
It wouldn’t take many JayCee Coopers to render the WNBA a farce. Reeve could have made a contribution if she had taken up that possibility. As it is, she mostly proved that the welcome mat is out in the Star Tribune’s Opinion Exchange (as they call it) to columns lacking in either evidence or argument. Under certain circumstances, the correct attitude will suffice. In this case it serves to let us know where Cheryl Reeve and the Lynx stand on the issue. I would like to say that Reeve is hardest hit by the Court of Appeals decision today if only I could be sure it was the last word on the issue under Minnesota law.
JOHN adds: I just want to amplify Scott’s point about Cheryl Reeve’s op-ed supporting trans women, i.e. men, competing in women’s sports. Reeve coaches a WNBA team. As she must know, there are thousands of men who are better basketball players than any woman in the world. Only around 450 of them play in the NBA. The others are playing in other countries, in the NBA’s developmental league, for college teams, or doing something else entirely–earning, in most cases, a small fraction of what NBA players make. If men could play in the “Women’s” National Basketball League, there wouldn’t be a woman left in professional basketball. Reeve must know this, so her subscribing to “trans” ideology is doubly contemptible.
]]>“Well, almost all government policy is wrong. . . but frightfully well carried out!”
This came back to mind when seeing the results of a PNAS study that shows that excess deaths in the United States, which adopted the COVIDiocy with great relish, were among the highest in the world, while Sweden, which has the least mindlessly restrictive policy, had the fewest.
Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have produced a fine report on these findings that offer ten key lessons for policymakers. Highly recommended.
]]>The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. We (I) have been pulling for the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court has already entered an order staying the narrowed preliminary injunction that had been fashioned by the Fifth Circuit while the case is pending before the Court. Justices Alito dissented from the stay. In his dissent he was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. I thought the Supreme Court stay was a bad sign of the likely outcome of the case.
In the event this morning, the plaintiff/respondents complaining of the government’s encouragement of censorship on social media platforms suffered a bloodbath, if I may use that word in its colloquial sense. If I am not allowed to use that word in its colloquial sense, I would say that the plaintiff/respondents had a bad day in Court.
I listened to the oral argument in order to assess the likely outcome of this interlocutory appeal. I think it is likely that the preliminary injunction stayed by the Supreme Court will be vacated and that the Fifth Circuit decision will be reversed. I am rashly reading the omens of the give-and-take in the argument like a Roman soothsayer examining entrails.
Although the appeal before the Court is interlocutory, meaning the case has not yet been fully litigated, it is not clear if anything will be left of the case when it is returned to the lower courts by the Court’s decision (by June 30). Interested observers are “encouraged” to make their own assessment by reviewing the parties’ briefs filed and listening to the oral argument.
]]>There is one new detail in the story, however, worth dwelling on:
Cuba recruited Americans, in part, by looking for potential sympathizers. Cuban intelligence officers routinely target young people, often in academia, with an ideological pitch about Cuba suffering under the U.S. economic embargo and other policies, current and former officials say.
“The Cubans didn’t pay big and didn’t need to pay big,” said Stuart Hoyt Jr., a former FBI agent who worked Cuban counterintelligence cases. “Because they could find people that sympathize.” . .
Ana Belén Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst considered Havana’s most damaging spy in the U.S. government, was recruited by Cuban intelligence while a student.
Yet another reason to view large portions of our universities as enemies of our country.—full stop. This is a clear case of double intelligence failure.
]]>It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount of money churning out its product. According to a 2019 Traffic Magazine story posted by the Star Tribune: “The paper has been solidly profitable each of the last 10 years.”
Taylor identifies as a Republican, but he has not altered the orientation of the newspaper. He suffers from two obvious limitations. He has a high tolerance for mediocrity and he gets his news from the Star Tribune.
Last year Taylor hired former Walz administration commissioner of economic development Steve Grove to run the newspaper. Grove is the chief executive officer and publisher of the Star Tribune. In a sense it is good to have a Democrat at the top of the organization. It should make things clear for those slow on the uptake.
In my opinion, Minnesota would be better off without the Star Tribune. Its performance adversely affects the state’s politics and public policy as well as its major institutions, generally pushing them ever further to the left. It facilitates the suppression and dissemination of relevant news affecting the left. In 2018 I summed up my observations in “The role of the Star Tribune.”
All in all, it should be difficult to imagine a worse object of philanthropy than the Star Tribune. However, that’s not how Grove sees it. In his 2024 report to readers, he advised (link in original): “We are…positioning ourselves to access funding from philanthropic sources, a growing trend in journalism. To that end, we’re hiring a development director to spearhead this new effort for the Star Tribune.”
Yesterday Grove updated readers in “We’re growing for Minnesota.” He reported: “[W]e’re bringing on a new philanthropy leader, Melissa Wind, whose many years of experience will help us kick-start this new effort for the Star Tribune. We’re positioning ourselves to benefit from philanthropic support for journalism — a growing movement and important aspect of any media business model today. More on that soon.” Grove’s update is headlined “Star Tribune is growing for Minnesota.”
It’s not entirely clear what “this new effort” is. These are the immediately preceding paragraphs:
On Thursday, we announced that Scott Gillespie, the longtime editor of our Opinion section, is retiring in June. That means we’re looking for a new Opinion editor, who will play a critical role in shaping the future of the Star Tribune. We’re looking for a dynamic leader to expand our vibrant editorial and commentary sections — a key aspect of our service to the state.
To that end, we’ll also have news soon on the hiring of a commentary and engagement director, whose job will include proactively soliciting compelling commentary pieces from a much broader group of Minnesotans across the geographic, political, and demographic spectrum. The goal is to make our opinion pages the most lively and important water cooler in the state.
The Star Tribune needs charitable contributions to support the employment of “a commentary and engagement director, whose job will include proactively [sic] soliciting compelling commentary pieces from a much broader group of Minnesotans across the geographic, political, and demographic spectrum”?
You have got to be kidding me. In the words of the William Holden character in Network, I implore potential contributors: “Don’t do it, buddy!”
As I say, this is the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. The Star Tribune “positions itself” to imitate the big players elsewhere, holding out a tin cup to divert money from potentially worthy causes. Some inspired editorial cartoonist could aim his pen at these people and inflict a moment’s embarrassment, assuming they are capable of shame. Ridicule is in any event warranted.
]]>The Kamala conundrum comes down to this: She was picked because she was Black and female, a combo tantamount to job security. Now that she has become a burden to the Democratic ticket, Biden can’t fire her. He can’t risk alienating his base. Full stop.
That was Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, in a March 15 piece headlined “For the Country’s Sake, Vice President Harris Should Step Aside,” a move proposed “with all due respect.” If readers wonder how much respect is due, a ballpark figure would be zero, and that was true from the start.
Kamala Harris owes everything to poontronage from Willie Brown, a Democrat queenmaker 30 years her senior. Brown set up his new girlfriend in lucrative sinecures and backed her run for district attorney in San Francisco. DA Harris went easy on gang member David Hill, who deployed an AK-47 to gun down San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza. That drew fire even from Dianne Feinstein, but in 2010 Brown still backed his main squeeze for state attorney general.
Harris was so lightly regarded that the Sacramento Bee, a reliable Democrat bullhorn, endorsed her Republican opponent Steve Cooley, district attorney of Los Angeles County. Cooley prevailed on election night but three weeks of ballot harvesting put Harris over the line by less than one percent. That was blatant election fraud for all but the willfully blind, which includes the composite character president.
“She is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough,” said the former Barry Soetoro in 2013. “She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country.” With that Easter Island stone face, the people have to wonder, and there was little evidence that Harris was brilliant or tough.
AG Harris stayed quiet in 2014 when racist Mexican national Luis Bracamontes gunned down police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. In 2015 repeatedly deported felon Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, shot and killed Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier. Attorney general Harris defended the city’s sanctuary policy and failed even to decry “gun violence” in the case.
On December 2, 2015, Muslim terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 unarmed innocents and wounded 22 at an office party in San Bernardino. In a December 17 statement, Harris said “We must seek justice for those who lost their lives,” without explaining that they had been murdered. The AG warned of “the dangers of Islamophobic rhetoric, but failed to condemn the terrorists, explain their motive, or name a single victim.
Harris made her way to the Senate and in 2020 Joe Biden tapped her for the ticket. Now even Democrats realize that the “Biden-Harris administration” has been a bust. “Obama’s narrator” David Axelrod wants Biden to step aside and Kathleen Parker wants Kamala Harris to follow. Politics aside, there’s a lesson here. When you pick Kamala Harris because she is “black and female,” you get the worst possible person for the job.
]]>Politico acknowledges that Trump’s sense of humor is an asset, but then goes on to put Trump in the desired company:
“A dollop of humor makes the anti-establishment rage go down,” as the writer Noah Berlatsky wrote in 2020 for Foreign Policy in a piece headlined “Fascists Know How to Turn Mockery Into Power.” “Horseplay is necessary,” believed Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest, most loyal advisers and the Nazis’ top propagandist. “Mussolini,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of Strongmen, told me, referring to 20th-century Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, “had the same twisted sense of humor” as Trump. And stenograms of Communist Party and Politburo meetings in the era of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union show no shortage of notations of laughter — from jokes made at the expense of somebody about to be on the outs to a sort of forced or sycophantic fun. “There’s a lot,” Maya Vinokour, a scholar of Stalinism, told me, “and that even ends up being true as the purges start.”
You know who else was funny? Jack Kennedy. His joke about buying votes after he won the West Virginia primary is a classic of political humor, both because it was very funny and because it defused a troubling (for Kennedy) issue. But Kennedy’s humor can’t be sinister; he was a Democrat.
Reporters all play the same tricks. They call on “experts” to deliver the partisan commentary that they, as reporters, are not supposed to indulge in. One of the funny things about this Politico piece is the roster of “experts” who deliver the don’t-be-fooled-by-his-humor-Trump-is-a-fascist message:
“He’s always been funny,” Jen Mercieca, the author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, told me…. “That,” she said, “is how autocrats work.”
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“Because he’s doing something really serious,” Leif Weatherby, a professor at New York University and a co-organizer of the Working Group on the Global New Right, told me, “with humor.”
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“It’s such a huge part of his movement,” Alexander Reid Ross, the author of Against the Fascist Creep and a member of the executive committee of the Far Right Analysis Network, told me.
Nothing like objective commentary. But the subject is deadly serious, as Politico reminds us:
[B]y doing it in the context of jokes, Trump diminishes the unprecedented enormity of the accusations against him —
What is unprecedented is actually the Democrats’ use of lawfare against a political opponent. The accusations against Trump are, for the most part, laughable and therefore a fit subject for comedy.
-that he tried to overturn an election…
There is nothing wrong with trying to overturn an election by legal means. Democrats, like Al Gore and Al Franken, to name just two instances, do it all the time.
…fomented a deadly insurrection…
The idea that the January 6 protest was an “insurrection” is idiotic. Moreover, Trump didn’t foment it, and it was deadly only to Ashli Babbitt. Unlike numerous violent riots that the Democrats have fomented, beginning in 2020, which have killed dozens.
…and concealed national security documents…
They are kidding, right?
…while convincing his followers that what’s plainly so serious can’t be serious at all.
I think they just made the case for Trump. The Democrats’ accusations against Trump deserve to be mocked. While in some cases–paying off Stormy Daniels, failing to give White House files back after being asked to do so by the National Archives–they reflect poorly on Trump, it is the Democrats’ attempt to win an election by deluging their opponent with bogus criminal charges that is sinister and unprecedented. And not at all funny.
]]>A Lebanese migrant who was caught sneaking over the border admitted he’s a member of Hezbollah, he hoped to make a bomb, and his destination was New York, The Post can reveal.
Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, was caught by border patrol on March 9 near El Paso, Texas. While in custody he [was] asked what he was doing in the US, to which he replied: “I’m going to try to make a bomb,” according to a Border Patrol document exclusively obtained by The Post.
In a subsequent sworn interview, Ebbadi said he had trained with Hezbollah for seven years and served as an active member guarding weapons locations for another four years, according to internal ICE documents.
Ebbadi’s training focused on “jihad” and killing people “that was not Muslim,” he said.
Since Ebbadi is described as being 22 years old, that would mean he started with Hezbollah at age 11. But was he really a would-be terrorist? The Post also reports:
Ebbadi said he was fleeing Lebanon because he “didn’t want to kill people,” adding “once you’re in, you can never get out.”
Ebbadi is world traveler, having been in Sweden, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Panama, all apparently (although this isn’t clear, either) within the last year. International travel doesn’t seem to be difficult for Hezbollah members. Ebbadi is slated for deportation, although God only knows to what country.
It is hard to tell how much of a threat Mr. Ebbadi was, if any. But millions of illegals have crossed the southern border in the last few years. Most recently, many have come from the Middle East. Undoubtedly some among them do not wish us well. Having deliberately obliterated our southern border in order to allow millions of unvetted illegals to enter, Joe Biden and the Democrats can only pray that they get to November without a major terrorist attack perpetrated by some of those whom Biden fecklessly invited in.
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