Temporary problem, permanent solution
The Friday Letter / No. 492 / May 13, 2022
Edited with corrections at 8:48 a.m. EDT
Suicide is always tragic as it offers a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Vicky White made a serious error in judgment by helping a violent inmate escape when she had to know the scheme would fail. She had everything to lose and lost it. Casey White, facing a capital murder trial and already imprisoned for the rest of his life, had nothing to lose. He acted rationally. She did not.
Vicky White's sympathizer was the very sheriff she betrayed, Rick Singleton of Lauderdale County, Ala. He wanted her to come back home alive and safe to answer for her actions. He begged her to give up before she got hurt. We are a family, Singleton said. We protect our own. She could have paid for her crime with possibly 10 years in prison. She could have been free around age 66 to resume her life.
We could turn this discussion to the stupidity of having female guards in male prisons and jails, but that is for another day.
I have no experience or education in this area, only thoughts on it. The closest I got to a suicide situation occurred when I was a counselor at the Indiana Boys School, when I had the duty to inform a teenage inmate that his father had murdered his mother and then killed himself.
The experience was not pleasant. My partner and cottage manager, a big bad streetwise correctional officer who grew up in a Harlem tenement house, was all encouragement as he crouched behind me while I delivered the news. “You can do it, Steve. You can do it!” he said. Thanks a lot.
Which brings us to Ruby Taverner, who before undergoing a sex mutilation operation was called Martin Taverner. Here is how a story begins at The Blaze:
“Police say that a transgender woman was found shot to death after she shot and killed her transgender boyfriend and her twin brother.” We failed to unravel this sordid tale. The confusion stems from the reporter's fruitless attempt to describe the parties involved. It impossible to tell who is whom because of the labels.
What is a “transgender” woman? Is that a man who pretends to be a woman? We think so, but these stories never explain. It might be a woman who pretends to be a man. We just aren't sure.
We are certain of this: Our Declaration of Independence does not say that “All womyn, men, non-binary and ciz-gendered people are created equal.”
Police in Independence Township, Mich., were called to an apartment where “a staggering” number of shots had been fired. The Blaze reported that “They identified 22-year-old Ruby Taverner as a suspect in the murders since she (sic) lived at the apartment, was in a romantic relationship with Muscat, and was the twin to Bishop Taverner. Ruby was previously known as Martin Taverner.”
Closer inspection reveals that Ruby Taverner committed suicide after he killed the others. Ruby identified as a female, though the story does not say whether he had undergone sex mutilation surgery or just liked to wear women's clothes. Are you following this?
All medical research – as found in the academic journals but not in Google or Wikipedia articles often written by imbeciles – agrees that it is not possible to change one's sex. A female is born with two X chromosomes, a male with one X and one Y chromosome. Having one's privates mutilated does not change that.
Medical science agrees that sexual dysphoria is a mental disorder, a very sad one. Whether this explains the high suicide rate among its sufferers is a subject for much needed further research.
The futility of arguing with leftists
Quote Investigator says the first known use of an oft-used phrase as a zinger in election debates – You are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts – came from Bernard Baruch, then chairman of the War Industries Board, in 1918.
A good debater easily detects an opponent's attempt to disguise opinion as fact. In our country, leftists are generally not good debaters because they don't need to be. They've not had to develop the art. Their backs are always covered by the adoring press. Look at the recent incident at Yale Law School, where future lawyers shouted down a conservative speaker rather than consider his remarks for debate.
This makes debating them futile. All we can do is point out their fallacies. Sometimes these fallacies result from goofy, illogical thinking. More often they are lies, rarely exposed by their pals in the leftstream media.
Here is what Senate Leader Schumer and House Speaker Pelosi said in a joint statement, found at Pelosi's website:
Excerpt 1: “The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”
Excerpt 2: “Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation – all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century.”
Debate expertise isn't necessary to understand that Excerpt 1 is opinion. Excerpt 2 contains false statements presented as facts.
At the dinner table tonight, ask your high school-age children if they see the difference.
If they need explanation, point out that the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade is not about abortion. It's about the proper jurisdiction for determining its legality. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution plainly vests this authority with the state legislatures. Repeal of Roe merely corrects a very bad SCOTUS decision left standing for 49 years.
As I wrote last week, one could be totally in favor of abortion and still realize that Roe should be overturned. To borrow from our lefty friends,
Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go!
Trying to make argument with people who believe Excerpt 2 is fact is futile, pointless. As Mother used to say when I wasn't getting my way, “I don't argue with children.” Burn notice!
Short takes on the news
Wikipedia removed the profile of Senate Republican candidate Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania, saying she is not a notable person. A black conservative, she is running against Trump-endorsed gun control advocate and celebrity physician Mehmet Oz and others. The Oz profile wasn't removed, Just the News reports. . .
A convicted child molester who got a light sentence on the recommendation of Soros-backed L.A. District Attorney George Gascon has been charged with murder in a separate 2019 case. A man who calls himself Hanna Tubbs is being held in a men's jail, Just the News reports. . .
Alaska will use only mail-in ballots in a special primary election next month to fill the seat of Don Young, who died in office in March. Ballots were mailed to every registered voter, said to be 118 percent of the state's voting age population. Signatures will not be verified, John Daniel Davidson writes at the Federalist. The rules are a ballot fraudster's dream. “Democrats and left-wing activists would love nothing more than to hold elections entirely by mail with as few safeguards in place to prevent ballot fraud,” Davidson says. . .
While protesters who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, languish in jail without trial dates or bail, Biden's press secretary says the administration approves of protests outside Supreme Court Justices' homes as long as they are “peaceful,” Debra Heine writes at American Greatness. “(Jen) Psaki went on to suggest that Biden has no problem with protests outside of the conservative justices' homes,” Heine reports. She noted that “Picketing or disrupting the tranquility of a home in Virginia, where some of the justices live, and attempting to influence a judge is illegal in the commonwealth.”
Today's quotes
“It would be the fall of a great spiritual Berlin Wall inside our nation.” – Joy Pullman, speculating on the effect of overturning Roe v. Wade, at The Federalist.
“Jen Psaki has set the standard for returning decency, respect and decorum to the White House Briefing Room. I want to say thank you to Jen for raising the bar, communicating directly and truthfully to the American people, and keeping her sense of humor while doing so. I thank Jen (for) her service to the country, and wish her the very best as she moves forward. – Joe Biden
Decorum lacking in Sean Spicer, Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Dana Parino? Spare me!
Tracking the Great Reset
Some slow-learning House Republicans may finally realize that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not their friend. It's about time.
The New York Post reports that Big Tech has replaced oil and tobacco as drivers of U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying. Before the 2020 election, Donald Trump was about the only person who understood this reality.
Now some House Republicans are bristling at the Chamber's fierce opposition to anti-trust reform that would rein in the Chamber's biggest establishment contributors. “Critics now say Big Tech funders including Meta, Google and Amazon are increasingly setting the group’s agenda,” the Post reports.
Recommended reading
“Kamala the Office Tart by Elizabeth Fortunato
Fortunato takes a look at the vice president's performance, her high staff turnover, continual gaffes and seeming inability to understand what it is she is supposed to do. Fortunato worries about the prospect of Harris as president.
“Biden’s mental infirmity is more visible by the day. Harris’ ascension to our country’s highest office may be closer than anyone wants to acknowledge,” she writes at American Greatness. “In considering a potential Harris presidency, one must seriously consider what, if any, qualifications she actually possesses for the job.”
“Fox News Is Headed for Disaster” by Emerald Robinson
“Fox News has been on a collision course with its own audience since the stolen 2020 election – and you can almost feel the impact coming.” This is how Emerald Robinson begins her brick-by-brick takedown of Fox News in her Substack column The Right Way. This is without doubt the most damning explanation of how the self-proclaimed conservative news channel helped turn Trump's election win into defeat, beginning with Brett Baier calling Arizona for Biden seconds after the polls closed, encouraging other states to slow-walk the count.
“No More Ballots in the Wild” by Josh Lippincott
Writing at American Greatness, Lippincott says the best way to end voting fraud is to end mail-in balloting. Here are his first two paragraphs:
“When the French people voted for a new president in April, they did so on a single day using paper ballots filled out in the privacy of official polling stations. France, being a normal First World democracy, takes election security seriously. Electronic voting machines are virtually never used. Mail-in voting has been banned nationwide since 1975 out of security fears. Voter rolls are regularly purged of the dead and those who have moved. It is a given that every French voter must show identification before being allowed to fill out a ballot.
“The United States, by contrast, is an oligarchy (a regime where the elite rules) that is only pretending to be a democracy. This is why we use a Third World banana republic election system.”
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