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Monday, January 1, 2024

Ohio Governor Who Vetoed Bill Blocking Sex-Changes For Kids Took $40K From Pro-Trans Hospitals

 What a shock...

Ohio's 'Republican' governor, Mike DeWine, took over $40,000 from hospitals which prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children, before vetoing a bill that would outlaw puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.

DeWine stunned state Republicans on Friday, vetoing House Bill 68, which would also prevent transgender athletes (dudes) from competing in girls' sports.

According to The Federalist Papers;

A review of donations from 2018 to 2023 reveals that the governor received a total of $40,300 from the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association (OCHA), Cincinnati Children’s, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and ProMedica Children’s Hospital.

The OCHA donated $10,000 to the Mike DeWine and Jon Husted Transition Fund on Dec. 28, 2018, and another $10,000 on Dec. 7, 2022, according to the report. This transition fund allows candidates to spend donations for “transition activities and inaugural celebrations,” as outlined in Ohio’s campaign finance handbook.

Affiliates of OCHA, such as Cincinnati Children’s and ProMedica, also made significant contributions. Cincinnati Children’s donated $300 on Dec. 15, 2022, and ProMedica, another affiliate of OCHA, donated $10,000 in December 2018. Nationwide Children’s, a third affiliate with OCHA, donated $5,000 in December 2018 and another $5,000 in January 2023 to the transition fund.

The Cincinnati Children's and Nationwide Children's hospitals, for example, offer gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and have no stated age limit guidelines for patients.

Nick Lashutka, president of the OCHA, slammed House Bill 68 during testimony, arguing that it "strips away" the rights of parents and their transgender children.

As The Federalist Papers' Elizabeth Allen notes, it's hard not to link the donations to DeWine's 11th hour veto of HB68.

Politics at its finest...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ohio-governor-who-vetoed-no-sex-changes-children-took-40k-pro-trans-hospitals

The True Cost of Trading with the Enemy

 They say the generals are always fighting the last war, and sometimes there’s truth to that.

But in 2024, our ability to mount a wartime footing against our most likely enemy is most severely hampered, not by the readiness of our armed forces, but by our most likely enemy’s deep infiltration into not just our military, but the entirety of our civil life.

Consider our response when Russia  annexed Crimea in 2014, and then, again, when they escalated with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

We imposed economic sanctions on Russia and Belarus, banning many imports and exports. This was manageable because we have traditionally exported relatively little to them, and imported relatively little from them as well.  While these sanctions have certainly been enough to be felt (such sanctions tend to hurt us more than the other party, unfortunately), they could be imposed relatively easily, only because there was relatively little commerce to interrupt.

If we were to maintain a neutral position on the war, we would not have needed to do this at all.  It is a critical step, however, if there is a chance of joining the conflict. You cannot continue to trade with a country with which you are at war.

Imagine if we had been dependent on Germany and Japan for either finished goods or manufacturing components, on the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? We obviously lost all commerce in both directions from that day until the end of the war; all pending orders were stopped; any of our dies or molds or manufacturing processes essentially became unavailable enemy property until the war’s end. 

Luckily, our dependence on these countries was minimal in 1941; our manufacturing sector could become independent of any countries on the other side of the war’s dividing lines, and we could ramp up domestic production to a wartime footing relatively quickly

As much as we may try to avoid thinking about it, we all know that the next country with which we are likely to go to war is the People’s Republic of China, a communist military dictatorship.

This isn’t an idle fear; China has been threatening our friends for years, recently ramping up not only the rhetoric but physical sea incursions as well.  Long known for funding and encouraging North Korea’s saber-rattling against South Korea, Japan, and the United States, Red China is now making actual moves on the Philippines and other South China Sea neighbors, as well as Taiwan.   As America’s leadership grows more impotent, China gets bolder and bolder, and understandably so.  Beijing knows that 2024 is likely their best opportunity ever to invade and annex at least one neighbor.  Such an invasion will surely create a larger war, and even if the U.S. doesn’t step in, there is no question but that all U.S.-China trade would necessarily come to an immediate halt.

We know from any random shopping trip that a majority of the finished goods that we buy in the store -- small appliances, electronics, clothing, shoes, toys, gifts -- are now made in China. Even most of the electrical products that we manufacture right here in the United States are made here of a wide array of components imported from China.  We might manufacture a refrigerator or oven in the USA, using American steel and American glass, but if the printed circuit board, power cord, heating elements or cooling condenser had to be imported from China, our domestic production even of those American-made products will stop cold the day the war starts.

When the inevitable war with China comes, consider what our current interdependence with China will mean to the American way of life:

  1. Many of our companies depend on exporting to China for their profit margin. Such exports will of course end immediately.  But that’s the least disruptive issue, compared to the rest:
  2. We buy countless finished goods from China.  Goodbye to that, for the duration.
  3. American factories buy countless components everything from off-the-shelf standard products to customized parts. Don’t assume we can just buy them from another country. For millions of globally-sourced parts, China is the only current source. It’s not a matter of ramping up production; it’s a matter of relearning how to make things.
  4. Countless American businesses “own” factories in China, where not only Chinese people work, but American and other foreigners do as well, often living there with their families.  Goodbye to those plants, and their output, and the U.S.-owned equipment, dies and molds, and personnel.
  5. Similarly, countless Chinese nationals are in the USA, working at American companies. Some are doubtless honorable immigrants; many are undoubtedly plants, foreign agents ready to be activated upon the breakout of hostilities.  How do we know which to deport, which to detain, which to welcome as immigrants?
  6. How many of our colleges depend on the billions of dollars per year in Chinese tuition and joint research grants (which also serve as a cover for stealing our technology?). Once hostilities are joined, the drying-up of this funding will cripple many of our colleges, as will the presence of a veritable army of likely foreign agents.
  7. How much of our transportation, logistics, and retail economies are dependent on trade with China. Millions of jobs?  Goodbye to much of that.
  8. Consider American-made cars dependent on China for the printed circuit boards that run their dashboards.  Consider American pharmaceutical companies who have many of their drugs made in China. Consider the computer networks that power your business, your home internet, your phone service, often local utilities too, most of which depend on Chinese equipment, Chinese parts, Chinese remote control. To how much of that must we say goodbye?

This is just a starting point.  There’s much more.  America has moved from traditional AC plug-in technology (which could be made anywhere) to cordless technology (which depends on lithium ion batteries almost entirely sourced in China).  Almost everything we do, everything we use, everything we depend on, is either partially or wholly dependent on trade with the most malevolent, militant, and expansion-minded country on earth.

Remember how destructive the “supply chain crisis” of 2021-2022 was? That was when we weren’t at war.  That was when we just couldn’t get parts for a couple months longer than usual.  Now imagine it being five years, or ten, or twenty.

President Trump tried to awaken us to this threat, and even implemented expensive punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, to shake some sense into the American business community.  As soon as it started to have an effect, and some American manufacturers started home-shoring again, our nation’s enemies installed Joe Biden in the office of the presidency to put a halt to that corrective process.

China plays the long game. We don’t know for sure if this will be the year it all happens.  But if China wants to do it at all, then it’s hard to imagine that there will ever be a better year for it than this one.

The sooner America wakes up, the better.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional and trade compliance consultant. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II, and the brand new Volume Three).


https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/the_true_cost_of_trading_with_the_enemy.html

Disease is diverse and inclusive too

 The flood of illegal immigrants has brought with it human trafficking, rampant crime, known terrorists, sexual slavery, pedophilia, the drug deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, has enriched cartels beyond their wildest dreams and oh-so-much more. Another diverse and inclusive import is third-world diseases once all but eradicated in America. It’s becoming rather noticeable:

Following reports of data showing migration at the southern border smashed monthly records in December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Biden administration of "aiding and abetting" drug cartels. 

"We've got the Biden administration, as I said, aiding and abetting the cartels, encouraging the cartels to make billions of dollars and to bring as many people here as fast as possible, and as soon as possible," Paxton told Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz on "Sunday Morning Futures." "That's what the Biden administration is doing. They're not just not doing their job, they're actually encouraging the opposite," he added. 

And they’ve been doing it for years:

New York City’s health commissioner announced last week that the influx of migrants from the southern border — more than 50,000 to New York City alone in the past year — is delivering contagious diseases, including tuberculosis and polio, to our neighborhoods.

The same disease threats are also endangering other migrant destinations, including California, Texas and Florida.

In a letter to physicians and health-care administrators citywide, Commissioner Ashwin Vasan explained, “Many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB.”

TB, short for tuberculosis, is a bacterial infection. It is treatable with antibiotics, but it generally takes six to nine months of medication to recover. Not a walk in the park.

TB spreads through the air, like flu or a cold. 

But how can this be? Surely every immigrant is carefully vetted at the border, like for Covid, whose lockdowns nearly destroyed the economy?  Of course, and have I told you I’m a Nigerian prince in exile, and if you’ll give me your bank account numbers, I’ll deposit millions for safekeeping, and you can keep some?

Immigrants who lawfully apply for a visa must undergo health screenings and show they are vaccinated, and refugees are screened for TB before entering the United States. 

Not so for those wading across the Rio Grande.

Nationwide, at least 6,009 of the 8,300 people with TB in 2022 were foreign-born, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Florida has been slammed with a 21% increase in TB since 2020.

Texas border counties have a TB rate triple the national average.

At least TB is treatable. Polio, on the other hand, can paralyze you for life.

The article explains other countries use inferior polio vaccines that can spread the disease, and polio, which was once eradicated in the US, is on the rise again. Only about 50% of illegals have received even the inferior, ineffective, vaccine, or so they say. And in Portland, and surely other blue-state social justice utopias, other microscopic imports abound:

Woke Democrats have caused an absurd amount of problems for law-abiding residents in Portland, including a surge in violent crime, out-of-control open-air drug markets, and widespread homelessness. Parts of the metro area have been transformed into a third-world-like state because of disastrous progressive policies. Now, the combination of failed policies has sparked what appears to be a public health crisis. 

A highly contagious bacteria called "shigella" is spreading across Portland. This bacteria is common in countries found in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions. 

"Shigella spreads when one person's infected poop gets into another person's mouth through food or water, from objects or surfaces with shigella bacteria on them, or during sex," Multnomah County said, according to local news outlet KOIN 6, adding, "Shigella spreads very easily. Even a very small amount is enough to make someone sick."

In December, there have been over 45 infections of the deadly bacteria in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties, with nine different strains found in Portland since October. For the year, 218 cases have been reported in the region. 

"Local disease patterns suggest that fecal-oral spread through sexual contact may account for between half and more than two thirds of all cases without international travel. The rest are typically attributed to other types of person-to-person spread including outbreaks among populations with lack of hygiene, shelter, and sanitation, and among people who use illicit substances," county officials told KOIN 6 News.

Hmm. From where could these different strains have suddenly come? Fortunately, Shigella can usually be successfully treated with antibiotics. Unfortunately, people die from common bacterial infections every day. They die from TB and polio too, perhaps not as often.

Yet another example of how illegal immigration is our diverse, inclusive and equitable strength, and for some Americans, their exclusive destruction.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor and retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/12/disease_is_diverse_and_inclusive_too.html

India’s Crude Oil Imports From Russia Plunge on Payment Issues

 

  • India’s December oil imports from Russia lowest since January
  • Despite challenges, Moscow remains India’s top crude supplier

\

India’s crude oil imports from its largest supplier Russia plunged in December to their lowest since January 2023, as six tankers carrying Sokol grade oil could not deliver due to payment issues amid tightening sanctions, according to data intelligence company Kpler.

After rising to an all time record of 2.15 million barrels a day in May, oil imports from Russia fluctuated downwards, experiencing a sharp decline between November and December to 1.48 million barrels a day last month, according to Kpler data.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-01/india-s-crude-oil-imports-from-russia-plunge-on-payment-issues

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Pendulum swings towards tighter measures against transgender athletes

 New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard’s appearance at the 2020 Tokyo Games as the first openly transgender woman to compete at the Olympics received mixed reviews in one of the most contentious areas in sport.

In the end, Hubbard retired after an inauspicious performance in Tokyo where she failed to record a valid lift.

Fast forward to 2023 and she would find herself ineligible for next year’s Paris Games after the International Weightlifting Federation tightened its eligibility rules.

Heading into 2024, there has been a seismic shift in the sporting landscape for trans athletes with the pendulum swinging back towards tighter measures on a divisive issue that has virtually no grey area.

In March, World Athletics banned transgender women who had gone through male puberty from elite female competitions — a decision federation president Sebastian Coe said was based “on the overarching need to protect the female category.”

Athletics followed a similar move made by World Aquatics in 2022 and more sport organizations have followed suit.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) in July banned trans women who had gone through male puberty from competing in the female category of competitive events. Athletes who do not qualify can enter the newly named “men/open” category.

The UCI’s new rules came two months after British Cycling’s similar ban on trans women.

Hubbard, French sprinter Halba Diouf and Welsh cyclist Emily Bridges could previously compete in the women’s category because they met testosterone level requirements.

“The only safeguard transgender women have is their right to live as they wish and we are being refused that, we are being hounded,” Diouf told Reuters after World Athletics tightened their rules.

Anti-trans activists argue that the participation of trans women is the biggest threat to women’s sport, with much of their anger targeted at high-profile athletes such as swimmer Lia Thomas, the first openly trans athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 U.S. national college title.

Thomas, who won the women’s 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 championships, cannot compete in the women’s category at the Paris Olympics due to World Aquatics’ new rules.

Canada’s soccer midfielder Quinn — whose case differs from Hubbard and Thomas in that Quinn was assigned female at birth — became the first ever openly transgender and nonbinary gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics.

The inclusion of trans women has prompted some of the world’s greatest athletes to take sides.

Megan Rapinoe, who recently retired from the U.S. women’s soccer team, said she would welcome a trans player on the squad.

“We as a country are trying to legislate away people’s full humanity,” Rapinoe told Time Magazine. “It’s particularly frustrating when women’s sports is weaponized. Oh, now we care about fairness? Now we care about women’s sports?”

Her comments raised the ire of tennis great Martina Navratilova, a trailblazer for gay rights, who tweeted a one-word response: “Yikes...”

Rapinoe and her partner, retired WNBA star Sue Bird, were among 40 professional athletes who signed a letter to U.S. lawmakers in April opposing a federal bill that stipulates Title IX compliance requires banning transgender athletes from playing women’s and girl’s sport.

Title IX is a 1970s civil rights law which bars discrimination based on sex.

“Certainly the pendulum is swinging back in a negative way,” Joanna Harper, a Canadian-born transgender woman and author, told Reuters in July. “There’s little doubt of that.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/pendulum-swings-tighter-measures-transgender-athletes-rcna131461

US Supreme Court's Roberts urges 'caution' as AI reshapes legal field

 Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Sunday, urging "caution and humility" as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work.

Roberts struck an ambivalent tone in his 13-page report. He said AI had potential to increase access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionize legal research and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply while also pointing to privacy concerns and the current technology's inability to replicate human discretion.

"I predict that human judges will be around for a while," Roberts wrote. "But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work - particularly at the trial level - will be significantly affected by AI."

The chief justice's commentary is his most significant discussion to date of the influence of AI on the law, and coincides with a number of lower courts contending with how best to adapt to a new technology capable of passing the bar exam but also prone to generating fictitious content, known as "hallucinations."

Roberts emphasized that "any use of AI requires caution and humility." He mentioned an instance where AI hallucinations had led lawyers to cite non-existent cases in court papers, which the chief justice said is "always a bad idea." Roberts did not elaborate beyond saying the phenomenon "made headlines this year."

Last week, for instance, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former fixer and lawyer, said in court papers unsealed last week that he mistakenly gave his attorney fake case citations generated by an AI program that made their way into an official court filing. Other instances of lawyers including AI-hallucinated cases in legal briefs have also been documented.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans last moth drew headlines by unveiling what appeared to be the first proposed rule by any of the 13 U.S. appeals courts aimed at regulating the use of generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT by lawyers appearing before it.

The proposed rule by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would require lawyers to certify that they either did not rely on artificial intelligence programs to draft briefs or that humans reviewed the accuracy of any text generated by AI in their court filings.

https://news.yahoo.com/us-supreme-courts-roberts-urges-230402150.html

Blinken Again Bypasses US Congress To Send Munitions To Israel

 Via The Cradle,

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on Saturday, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.

A State Department spokesman said on Friday that "given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer."

Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel. The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.

Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, Israeli forces bombed the Meghazi camp, killing 86 Palestinians in one strike.  Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy excused the death toll by telling Sky News the army had used an "incorrect munition."

But he refused to apologize for the loss of life and did not say what type of munition was used, despite being pressed several times by Sky News presenter Niall Paterson.

Israel has regularly used 2,000 lb US-made bombs to target residential neighborhoods in Gaza.

Continued instances of this sort cast doubt on the sincerity of the White House’s rhetoric calling for Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians in such huge numbers.

Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest in October, told The Washington Post that Blinken’s decision to rush these unguided munitions enables Israel to continue the type of operations in Gaza that have "led to so many Palestinian civilian deaths."

"This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being," he said. A Washington Post analysis found that Israel’s war against Gaza has been more devastating than any other 21st-century conflict.

International outrage continues in response to the Israeli bombing campaign, with South Africa invoking the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice the same day Blinken approved the additional weapons sale.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/blinken-again-bypasses-us-congress-send-munitions-israel