Politics

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson came under fire early this week for vetoing a bill that would prohibit doctors from providing children suffering from gender dysphoria with hormones, puberty blockers, surgeries, or other treatments that would 'affirm' their 'identity'. The governor's response to this criticism was to pour gasoline all over himself and light a match. There are few good long-term studies on the use of hormone and puberty-blocking treatments for transgender youth, primarily because such drugs have only been used in the past on a short-term basis to treat conditions like precocious puberty. They were not intended to suppress puberty indefinitely. Research suggests, however, these treatments can lead to an increase in suicidal thoughts or depression.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Snyder, currently polling second in the primary, is campaigning as an 'absolute' Trump supporter and has snagged high-profile endorsements from Ken Cuccinelli, Mark Morgan, Sarah Sanders and Kay Coles James. One of his top campaign issues is protecting the Second Amendment, reassuring Virginians that he 'believes that the Second Amendment is NOT optional'. But according to meeting minutes from Snyder's time serving on the College of William and Mary's Board of Visitors, he once voted for a weapons ban on campus. Then he tried to cover it up. Snyder was appointed to the W&M Board of Visitors (BOV) in 2011 by Republican governor Bob McDonnell.

Some hot water this week for Rep. Matt Gaetz. The Sunshine State Republican and adroit controversialist stands accused of everything from having sex with a 17-year-old girl to throwing orgies with underage prostitutes to showing his fellow lawmakers pictures of nude women on the House floor. He has yet to be caught chucking an alligator into a drive-thru window or attacking a Disney princess with a flamethrower, but even by Florida Man standards these are serious charges. The Justice Department has opened an investigation, while Gaetz himself has denied everything, claiming he’s being extorted. And certainly he deserves due process and the benefit of the doubt. Yet the allegations against him raise a thorny question: where do Republicans draw the line on sexual misconduct?

Biden is dishonest. His memory is shot. He’s an influence-peddler pretending to be a victim, a lifelong exploiter of his public position who hides behind the lowest forms of sentimentality. Hunter Biden, of course. You’d have to be on the wrong end of a three-day crack binge to confuse Hunter Biden with the impeccably honest, mentally agile and profoundly principled multimillionaire career politician Joe Biden. Hunter has written an autobiography. Or rather, some desperate and shameless mercenary has ghosted it for him. It belongs to the most execrable category of literature, the political memoir — the sort of book written to launch a political career (Dreams From My Father) or, as in this case, to end one (Ten Percent for the Big Guy).

Another day, another killing in America, another depressingly instant social-media argument over the perpetrator’s skin color. This time a man rammed his car into two Capitol Hill police officers in Washington DC. One, Officer William Evans, died. The other is seriously injured. The attacker then emerged from his car wielding a knife at other officers before he was shot and killed. Once again, various blue-checked Twitterers decided to assume that the killer must be some angry white Trump supporter, presumably because the last time the Capitol was attacked it was by a horde of angry Trumpists. But there was no evidence to suggest the killer was white. Indeed, in a video clip of the man being wheeled away having his chest pumped, his skin appeared dark.

Joe Biden was elected as a moderate-left Democrat, but he is not governing as one. He pledged repeatedly to work across party lines, but he is ramming through the biggest, most expensive progressive agenda in American history without any Republican votes. He is almost certain to try it again with his next two spending proposals, the largest since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. As the White House pushes these mammoth bills with only Democratic votes, Americans are realizing they got a very different president from the one they bargained for, the one they were promised during the campaign. What’s unclear is whether they will recoil from this new reality. Throughout the summer and fall, Biden ran as a unifier who could work across party lines.

I’ve had my Blue Heeler Murray since he was six weeks old. The breeder said he was 10 weeks, but I think she was just eager to get rid of him. I use the term ‘breeder’ pretty generously. Murray was born on a working farm that didn’t heed the closing plea of every episode of The Price Is Right. My significant other was first to arrive and literally had the pick of the litter. Six pups were playing sweetly with mom. One was off by himself headbutting a tree trying to shake loose a squirrel. That’s Murray. Blue Heelers are working dogs bred to herd cattle. If I am walking on the farm on any sort of path, Murray would instinctively get behind me to usher me along. When he was younger he would nip at my heel: hence the name ‘Heeler’.

The dim reaper is at it again. We need, President Biden tells us, to wear masks forever, to avoid ‘more cases and more desks...deaths...look...’ Look, fat: the number of desks has fallen in Texas and Florida, where mask-wearing in public is optional, while desks are rising in New York and New Jersey, where mask-wearing in public is required. It looks like COVID-19 works just like public-school teachers: differently in red states and blue ones. Biden uses the phrase ‘mask mandate’ like it’s already been approved, in the way that voters grant a mandate to an elected authority. But it hasn’t been voted for or approved. It’s a proposal from a president who parrots whatever the CDC tell him. It’s up to the state governors to approve or disapprove his suggestion.

What makes a tragic death a major news story? The races of the perpetrators and the victims, of course. As the media goes all in on critical race theory, many journalists have decided to only provide obsessive coverage of horrific crimes when they can be used to advance the idea — as so eloquently explained by NBA star LeBron James — that minorities are being 'literally hunted' by evil white people. Proof of this phenomenon has never been so clear as in the past several weeks. It all started when a white man was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at three different massage parlors in the Atlanta area.

Talk about mojo! It was a calm, genial and persuasive Joe Biden that appeared before the press yesterday afternoon, easily batting away the queries that were lobbed at him. The big takeaway was that, yes, as Sarah Baxter of the Sunday Times of London alone among the media has intuited, Biden is in for bigger game than one term. He made it clear yesterday that he’s going for the full monty, two terms or bust. Otherwise, Biden didn’t really make any news — which is itself newsworthy. No gaffes. No miscues. No fumbles. It was smooth sailing for him. Yet Biden’s opponents refuse to concede that he’s on a roll. They’re almost making it too easy for him. My chum Dominic Green, for example, deemed Biden’s performance worse than lackluster.

Just a sec. Let me check my notes. Ah, right. Hurgh. 'My message to the American people is: help is here. Hope is on the way.' 'Can I go home now?' he asked with his eyes. Joe Biden looked like he wanted to call an end to his first presidential press conference before he even got started. But he soldiered on. Having prepared for a few weeks to talk to — what, seven? Eight? — carefully selected members of the press, he was not about to give up on this chance to bask in some adulation. And boy was the adulation ever on offer. 'Was it because you were such a a nice man that you had more success than the awful Voldemort who proceeded you?' oozed one female correspondent. No that’s not a direct quote. The original was more embarrassing.

If you lay down with dogs you get fleas. If you make your bed with demented conspiracy theorists, you become mentally ill. This is the unfortunate position that certain sections of the American right have found themselves in following the presidential election last year. Lots of Americans had — and still have — suspicions about the massive surge in mail-in voting in November. It’s hard to blame them. The 2020 election was a very strange one on any number of fronts. But no sane person can possibly now deny that the Trump campaign, in its attempts to prove the election a fraud, engaged in and with some serious charlatanry.