It's Explainer Sunday!

For some reason, all our links answer questions you may have had.

First up, Jeff Maurer explains why Whiny Baby Mitch McConnell Might Not Vote for a Man Who Tried to Cripple Him.

The Washington Post is reporting that Mitch McConnell might have a unique reason for being skeptical about RFK Jr.’s nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. From the article:

Stricken with polio in 1944, 2-year-old Mitch McConnell spent his days confined to bed or undergoing a strict physical therapy regimen to rehabilitate his left leg at an age when most toddlers cannot sit still.

The Kentucky Republican’s childhood bout with the once-deadly disease that ravaged America has informed his ardent support for vaccines…

But McConnell’s life-altering experience is on a collision course with efforts to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, to lead the nation’s health department in President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Oh I see: McConnell is making it personal. It’s not supposed to be about you, Mitch! Confirmation hearings are about whether the person is qualified, not about whether — if they had their druthers — you might have been left wheelchair bound for life! You need to put your memories of watching untold scores of children be maimed and killed by one of history’s great plagues out of your mind and focus on the here-and-now!

I continue to believe that Trump would not shed any tears if Junior wasn't confirmed to be HHS Secretary. Yes, he had to promise him something in exchange for his election support, but if he gets rejected: "Hey, Bob, sorry it didn't work out. Good luck with your lucrative onesie business."

Don't miss, by the way, Junior's response to Senator Bennet's query: "Did you say that lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?"

More explations of note:

  • Abigail Shrier explains… How the Gender Fever Finally Broke.

    When the history of 21st-century gender mania is written, it should include this signal entry: In 2020, a website called GoFundMe, usually a place to find disaster-relief appeals and charities for starving children, contained more than 30,000 urgent appeals from young women seeking to remove their perfectly healthy breasts.

    Another entry, from June 2020: The New England Journal of Medicine, America’s platinum medical publication, published a piece explaining that biological sex is actually “assigned at birth” by a doctor—and not a verifiable fact, based on our gametes, stamped into every one of our chromosomes. In fact, biological sex ought to be deleted from our birth certificates—the authors claimed—because a person’s biological sex serves “no clinical utility.” Breaking news to gynecologists.

    [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)

    Public schools began asking elementary kids whether they might like to identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary.” Any dissent from this gender movement was met with suppression. The American Civil Liberty Union’s most prominent lawyer, Chase Strangio, announced his intention to suppress Irreversible Damage, my book-length investigation into the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls. “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” he tweeted. Weeks later, Amazon deleted Ryan Anderson’s book criticizing the transgender medical industry.

    Strangio will be happy to know that Irreversible Damage is (apparently) one of the books Portsmouth (NH) Public Library is more than willing to ban. Amazon link is at your right, though.

  • Christian Britschgi explains… How the Fair Housing Act Gave Us Emotional Support Parrots.

    The first two parrots merely annoyed the neighbors. But after the third arrived, the U.S. Department of Justice got involved—on the side of the parrots.

    In 2024, a New York woman teamed up with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to squeeze a six-figure settlement out of her former co-op building. The building's transgression? Violating her right to keep not one, not two, but three emotional support parrots in her home.

    It's a colorful case, but it isn't atypical.

    A stampede of emotional support dogs, cats, llamas, peacocks, ducks, miniature horses, and more are showing up in America's airports, businesses, and apartment complexes. This has produced no shortage of conflict, particularly in the housing context.

    It's all fun and games until you're awakened at 2AM by Polly demanding a cracker.

    And don't miss Christian's further observation:

    Call it a game of cat and mouse—either of which could, in theory, count as an emotional support animal in a court of law.

  • And finally, Drew Cline explains… Why more money doesn’t equal better schools.

    From local elections to legislative debates to legal challenges, discussion of public education in New Hampshire has been dominated by two persistent myths. The first is that more spending is the primary means of producing better educational outcomes. The second is that our educational outcomes are stunted because funding for K-12 public schools has “been slashed,” as a common talking point asserts.

    Because of these myths, instead of focusing on school leadership and proven, outcome-based measures of success, voters and policymakers have too often devoted their efforts toward improving fiscal inputs.

    In a new policy brief, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy reviews the last few decades’ worth of public education spending in New Hampshire, along with student performance measures, to help Granite Staters understand that the relationship between spending and outcomes is not as simple as its proponents claim.

    There are numbers, but also pictures:

    The Josiah Bartlett Center's 11-page policy brief is here. Read it and… well, don't weep, just support the separation of school and state.