Pun Salad

"In Massachusetts right now, those crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by three to one," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) told NBC 10 Boston. "We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts and we need to shut them down all around the country."

"You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that," she added, referring to the work done by the pro-life charities.

It's unclear what legal authority Elizabeth Warren would use to enact her will. In fact, a sitting U.S. senator trying to shut down charitable organizations, like crisis pregnancy centers, for no violation of laws but rather due to the fact that they further the pro-life cause, would be quite blatantly unconstitutional.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, just launched a broadside against The New York Times.

It came in the form of a tweetstorm that reads as follows, numbering and link added by me:

(1) The @nytimes has been providing a platform for transphobic hate & propaganda, with horrifying consequences. Texas just entered NYT articles into evidence to push for the TX Dept of Family & Protective Services to take trans kids away from their supportive parents. (2) During escalating assaults on trans people & trans rights nationwide, the New York Times is featuring writers debating whether trans people should even exist and scapegoating this already-marginalized community. One way to act in solidarity is to sign now: Sign now to tell the New York Times to stop providing a dangerous platform for transphobic hate, and instead amplify trans voices. As trans lawyer and activist Chase Strangio has said: “The NYT's horrible coverage of and fixation on trans people has been central to the progression of anti-trans bills and policies nationally… https://bit.ly/nytpetition (3) Thank you @chasestrangio for sounding the alarm and asking cis people to speak up. To trans & non-binary people: I'm with you. I’m going to keep fighting for your right to exist, to be safe as your full authentic selves, & to thrive. Our safety & liberation is intertwined. (4) The fights for trans rights and reproductive justice are wrapped up together. Our right to bodily autonomy—our ability to make decisions about our own bodies—is under threat. This affects ALL of us. We must be in solidarity to defeat the growing fascist movement to control us.

It goes almost without saying that the Times has not published anything “debating whether trans people should even exist” — this seems to just be completely made-up, or relying on a very esoteric definition of “exist.”

Two-thirds of Americans think Joe Biden is doing a poor job in office. The other third is selling meth to Hunter. The trajectory is decidedly southerly, and this has not escaped the notice of leftier Democrats who weren’t all that excited about the old man in the first place.

I don’t think that I would have much in common politically with RootsAction, the progressive group that has just made a splash with its new campaign to convince Joe Biden not to run for reelection in 2024. But I do admire progressives’ willingness to take on their party’s president. That’s a sign of good political health — rare on the left.

“A president is not his party’s king,” the RootsAction statement says, “and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”

Biden should have a fight. He should lose it.

The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.

“It's like a horror movie I'm being forced to watch and I can't close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”

That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized Covid vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had Covid. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to authorize booster shots for young children.

That doctor is hardly alone.

By now, you’ve heard about and probably read Bari Weiss’ speech The New Founders America Needs. Did you notice the italicized phrase in this passage?

I want to offer you the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the un-American revolution we are currently living through, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon. Then I want to tell you what I think we—liberals, conservatives, independents, trads, whigs, normies, the coalition of the sane—can do to stop it in order to preserve the precious virtues that have made this country the last, best hope on Earth and that have made every single one of our lives possible. 

I was titillated by the phrase “coalition of the sane.” It sounds really promising, but she never returns to it in her speech. And I am left wondering about the terms “coalition” and “sane.”

In this context, what does it mean to be sane? Probably it means believing that men and women differ in physiologically identifiable ways. It means believing that a color-blind society is a desirable goal. It means believing that freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry are important values. It means understanding that market processes have some virtues and that government processes have some vices.

But what does it mean to be a coalition? A coalition works together to overcome opposition. I do not think that Weiss’s list of constituents actually are a coalition. It includes too many of what I call Enablers—people who profess principles that differ from Woke ideology but who are ready to excuse it. Like Jonathan Haidt, they put the blame on social media. Like Jonathan Rauch, they put the blame on Donald Trump