Tag: transgender

Debt for Pakistani Trans

Pakistani transgender youth, American debt

Thirty-two trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money we don’t have.

I checked the U.S. Debt Clock last night. The federal government was, at that time, $200 billion shy of owing that amount, $32 trillion.

It’s such a big number that it doesn’t seem real.

Maybe that’s why politicians ignore it. And keep spending, adding to it.

All spending that seems fishy contributes to that debt. But so, alas,does spending that a majority of Americans may want. When you are over-spending, all spending contributes to the red ink.

Still, to witness elected government officials throw money around with reckless abandon is especially irksome. Consider all the taxes that pay for that debt, continually as well as eventually. And the misdirected investments that get derailed from productive activity just to fund that debt.

Today’s example of idiotic spending? A mere $500,000. Half a million bucks. Chump change — next to the trillions on budget lines.

So this half-a-million is slotted to go to Pakistan.

To train Pakistanis to speak, read and write in English.

But the kicker’s in the headline, courtesy of The Epoch Times: “Biden Earmarks $500,000 for Transgender Youth, Other Groups in Pakistan.” The blurb makes the obvious point I wish to drive home: “Biden ‘hell-bent on spending money we don’t have,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman’s office.”

Biden’s prodigality will provide “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”

The old saw about such foreign aid runs, “Don’t we have transgender youth in this country to help?”

But better to join Rep. Norman and point to the debt clock. And shake our heads.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags debt, foreign aid, Joe Biden, Pakistan, transgender

general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Happier in the Moment?

When I express worry about children and teens being put through what we used to call “sex change” procedures, the push-back often runs like this:

this is not happening;
you’re falling for a “moral panic”;
stop listening to right-wing propaganda!

But consult this video.

One interviewee who performs sex-change surgery discusses the “informed consent” of 14-year-olds. This doctor acknowledges that many children who agree to puberty blockers and surgery — changing their bodies irreversibly — end up regretting it.

“We talk about it [with the kids] but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about it in a serious way. That’s always bothered me,” he says. “But you know, we still want the kids to be happy. Happier in the moment, right?”

“It’s everything you have been told doesn’t happen,” says my friend David Strom in his report on the Project Veritas investigation (“Undercover video: puberty blockers at 8, surgery as young as 10 in New York”).

“It happens,” David writes. “Watch the doctors who do it explain that they do and that they are eager to do it to even pre-adolescent children. Even admitting that the ‘science isn’t really settled,’ but hey, we’ll do it if you want.”

We don’t let kids do everything that adults may do because we know that it takes time for human beings to mature. Adults, too, may regret having undergone hormone blocking and genital surgery. But adults have the best chance, a real chance, to decide responsibly.

Peer-pressured, doctor-pressured, even legislature-pressured, and perhaps very confused 14-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 10-year-olds . . . and 8-year-olds . . . don’t have the same chance to make an adult decision.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags feminism, gender, transgender

crime and punishment education and schooling First Amendment rights

Trans-Violent

Riley Gaines, protestors, trans, censorship, free speech

“I applaud the students, staff and faculty who rallied quickly to host alternative inclusive events, protest peacefully and provide one another with support at a difficult moment,” declared San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney on Monday.

The “difficult moment” she refers to? A talk on campus by All-American swimmer Riley Gaines, sponsored by Turning Point USA. Gaines was speaking out against “transgender women” (biological men) competing in women’s sports.

President Mahoney did finally acknowledge that the event was followed by “a disturbance,” which “unfortunately” “delayed the speaker’s departure.”

In fact, Gaines wasn’t able to leave for hours, until nearly midnight . . . when, as CNN reported, “the San Francisco Police Department sent officers to disperse the crowd.” Gaines says she was “physically assaulted,” “struck twice,” with video confirming a very threatening situation.

“We are reviewing the incident,” Mahoney assured, “and, as always, will learn from the experience.”

No arrests have been made. They should be. That’s the teachable moment we need.

SFSU’s president did acknowledge that what occurred last week was “deeply traumatic.” But she meant the event itself, which she claimed “advocated for the exclusion of trans people in athletics.”

That isn’t true. Gaines and many (if not most) folks involved in the controversy simply want collegiate sports separated by biological sex and not by gender identity.

Let’s realize that these Antifa-esque “trans activists,” the ones who threaten to beat up women, do not speak for all transgendered people — certainly not those I know and love. Their goal is clearly not harmony but the very opposite.

The solution is simple: Love for trans folks, common sense public policies, and jail for the thug attackers of free speech.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

The Liars

Talk about proof positive that school officials have a policy of lying to parents about their children!

According to Fox News, Kansas teacher Pamela Ricard contends that “deceiving parents about their children’s pronouns was against her Christian beliefs.”

Yet her bosses demanded this precise deceit.

Officials at Fort Riley Middle School suspended Ricard for referring to a transgender child by his or her legal name and by standard pronouns rather than by his or her preferred name and pronouns. (The Fox News report is coy about the actual sex of the child.) Ricard had also been ordered to use only the legal name and standard pronouns when speaking to the child’s parents — i.e., to conceal the child’s stated preferences.

Parents of any religion, or none, may well dispute the notion that when their kid suggests that he or she is “really” a member of the opposite sex, this profession of sexual faith points in a direction that any supportive adult ought only to encourage and sanction.

Of course, it is precisely the fact that parents may well disagree with school officials about the appropriate response to such intimations that inspires dishonest officials with an ideological-cultural agenda to demand that parents be lied to.

With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Pamela Ricard won a settlement of $95,000 from the Geary County school district for its treatment of her. After she filed the lawsuit, the district dropped its policy of lying to parents.

At least, so they say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture Regulating Protest

“He’s Got a Weapon!”

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.
—Voltaire

Our enemies are ridiculous. So why do they seem to be winning?

For today’s lesson, catch the pro-trans protests outside the offices of Netflix. Trans activists and a few of Netflix’s own trans employees were protesting the occasion of the online streaming giant’s “platforming” of comedian Dave Chappelle, whose latest special, The Closer, took a few digs at the huge influence that the tiny trans “community” has on American cultural and political life.

Chappelle referred to the way J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was treated online for defending biological women, declared himself a feminist on “Team TERF,” and talked about a trans friend of his who committed suicide after defending him online in a previous comedy special trans-fracas.

Did Chappelle say something untrue? Unfunny? Doesn’t matter. What he said, protesters proclaimed, was hurtful.

Each of us will judge all that in our own way. But we should be able to agree on one thing: the way the small protest mob treated one counter-protester was not truthful but very ridiculous.

Relevant details: a man attended the event holding aloft a sign saying “We Like Dave” on the obverse and “Jokes Are Funny” on the reverse.

A protester on the trans side of the divide tore up his sign, leaving him holding the naked stick, then shouting, “He’s got a weapon!” The crowd echoed, “He’s got a weapon!”

Activists these days often say “speech is violence” and “words are weapons.” Here, they violently rob a man of his speech and declare what’s left of his attempt a literal weapon. They think they are clever. But they are merely ridiculous.

Not funny like Dave Chappelle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling folly ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Toiletarianism

toilet, bathroom, trans, transgender, sex, gender, law, folly

President Obama and other politicians are taking a wide stance over the nation’s public restrooms. Important bathroom policy will finally be determined at the highest levels.

Last week, public educators nationwide received a legalistically-worded letter from the Departments of Justice and Education explaining how to legally treat transgender students under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. CNN boiled it down to “Fall in line or face loss of federal funding.”

Friendly federal “guidance” comes after dueling lawsuits between the Feds and North Carolina over that state’s House Bill 2, which establishes statewide restroom regulations. Those regs require that transgender folks use the bathroom appropriate to the sex listed on their birth certificate (whether Kenyan, Canadian or other).

Obama wants Americans to choose the restroom matching their self-chosen “gender identity.” Conservatives seem most worried that his policy is so loosely defined as to allow non-transgender male persons to simply claim to be transgender in order to shower with the girls volley-ball team or lurk in the powder room.

“Have we gone stark raving nuts?” questioned Sen. Ted Cruz, proclaiming: “Grown adult men, strangers, should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls.”

In California, there’s legislation to force businesses to make “all single-stall public restrooms” gender neutral. “Let’s make a clear statement that, if you want to go pee, by all means help yourself,” argued the proposal’s author.

Transgender people should be treated with care and respect, as should every person. But do we really need a national bathroom policy designed for maximum division in an election year?

Before politicians solve today’s glaring non-problem in public restrooms, they should solve a real problem first.

Just one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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