The Alligator News Roundup

Parents: If you have those with you who might be sensitive to certain contemporary cultural subjects, please fast-forward to the 4 minutes 30 seconds mark.

In 3 — 2 — 1… Okay!

Number Seven. BBC. International Chess Federation bans transgender women from competing.

Just when you thought we got all this straightened out and put all the controversy behind us, it seems a wave of CIS-male dominated misogynistic dogma is sweeping across Europe. I thought they were supposed to be the enlightened ones.

First, it was Germany that prohibited transgender (TG) women from competing against real women in swimming. Then the Brits said TG women can’t run a simple bicycle race against other girls. And now in Spain, the International Chess Federation (FIDE - they spell things funny there) has decided to keep TG women from competing with normal women in competitions.

The British added insult to injury by referring to the need to “protect the female class” with their new restriction. How condescending, to say in public that women need to be protected! These guys need to go back to a woke uni for some serious re-educating.

Chess means tabletop competitions. In quiet rooms, with padded seats and no distractions. The chess pieces weigh maybe an ounce each. The only real activity is to smash that little button on the clock when you’ve made your move.

So, removing TG women - who are not really women, they are really just men playing make-believe with or without original equipment mods; we all know that - must be about something besides upper body strength. Chess, which I know a lot about because I watched Mr. Spock play the 3-D version against himself back in 1966, is a game of strategy.

Is it possible that boys are better at strategy than girls? Or, put another way, is it possible that girls are better at things other than strategy?

This would imply, I suppose, that male and female brains are wired somewhat differently. That is a truly mind-blowing concept, but does not actually come as breaking news to anybody who has ever met anyone of the opposite sex.

Number Six. Bounding Into Economics dot com. Star Trek actor: Opposing child mutilation is like the holocaust.

Having given a nod to Mr. Spock, we will give Mr. Sulu his voice.

George Takei, writing in his blog “The Big Picture” on Substack, compares his 5-year-old childhood as a Japanese-American interned with his family during World War II to the brutal oppression of transgender children who are denied the right to “corrective surgery”.

If comparing a POW camp in Arkansas with irreversible surgical mutilation seems a stretch, at least recognize that Mr. Sulu’s position is as consistent as it is morally repugnant.

Politicians who seek to protect children from puberty blockers and horrifically invasive surgery apparently defies “all expert opinion”. It is ignorant; it is deliberately cruel; it leaves parents without any alternatives to see that Billie become Billy, or that Benny become Penny.

The dark forces which propel the evil-doers to NOT operate on the children — those evil-doers would be Republicans, of course, if not outright MAGA-loving Trump supporters — are, says the actor, the same forces which brought about the Holocaust in Europe 80 years ago.

Although, as I think about it, the sort of child mutilation performed in hospital operating theatres today for what they call “gender affirmation” rivals very similar practices performed by Joseph Mengele in 1940 under the authority of the Third Reich.

So, I’m a little confused. If somebody here is a Nazi, which one, exactly, is it?

Number Five. Just the News dot com. HHS announces $1.5 billion for next generation COVID vaccines.

You thought we were done with COVID? Where did you get THAT idea?

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), acting in conjunction with something called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) announced this week the latest Cash for Chemists award for creating new off-shoots of the mRNA vaccine to treat new off-shoots of COVID-19.

BARDA? Seriously? This actually sounds like something from a Bond movie.

According to CBS News, new variants, with names like EG.5, FL.1.5.1, and BA.2.86 — nowhere near as creative and scary as “Omicron” — have made their appearance. So far, a total of 6 cases of BA.2.86, for example, have been identified worldwide. Out of 8 billion at risk.

This all means the viruses have mutated; hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise. Maybe not by very much. A 20% increase in new EG.5 infections doesn’t really mean much without knowing (a) how many infections you started with, and (b) how serious the infections are. And maybe (c ), how long it lasted, or even (d) how it was treated.

But those are niggling details from the nattering nabobs of negativism (Spiro Agnew, 1970) which have no place in a serious conversation about serious events which can justify seriously flaunting governmental authority.

It may be time to set your hair on fire again.

Despite the prevalence of the new mutant silent killers, there have been “no reported changes in disease severity”, but experts will keep looking until they FIND some evidence, by golly.

Meanwhile, certain “watchmen on the wall” are setting the pace for public health once again. Jamie Lee Curtis has now donned her mask in public and encourages all of us to remain in fear. Lionsgate film studio has reinstituted mask requirements and daily COVID testing for employees.

Because, we are coming up on an election year. And that by itself is a reason to panic.

Number Four. Fox News. Headline changed, originally “Elections are bad for democracy.”

I guess I can see why they changed it.

An op-ed piece in the New York Times this week sought to show the only way to fix U.S. elections was by eliminating them. Because allowing citizens to vote is counter-productive to democracy.

For those of you who thought that the right to vote is the defining characteristic of a democracy, it just goes to show how out of touch you might be.

Instead of letting all those uneducated farmers and mechanics and business tycoons and doctors and accountants and salesmen and housewives and factory workers and unemployed people vote, we should instead turn to a random lottery.

This might actually address the modern issue of low interest in voting, and it would probably end the chicanery and fraud that can afflict an election at any level, but if you were tempted to think a lottery would produce a fraud-free outcome, well, check your preconceptions.

But the interesting thing about this Fox News story is that the original headline, “Elections are bad for democracy”, was withdrawn by the New York Times and changed to, “The worst people run for office. It’s time for a better way.”

Indeed, it may be time to run elections better. But a lottery is probably not it. I would settle for merely running elections better.

Number Three. The Gateway Pundit. St. Louis to outlaw AR-15s, hopes criminals will comply.

Stopping violence perpetrated by handgun-wielding thieves and random shooters is the objective of Mayor Tishaura Jones’ proposal to ban ownership of AR-15s.

If that lead sentence seemed to end in a different place from where it started, you are simply not keeping up, and you are likely part of the very problem we are trying so sincerely to solve.

I will try to make this simple. Please pay attention.

Because there is a lot of shooting in St. Louis, and because a lot of people are hurt by it, and because people do not obey laws, we are going to pass another law. With me so far?

This new law will take away your AR-15 and AK-47, and any other gun that looks like an AR-15 or an AK-47, so that you will no longer be able to shoot people with AR-15s or AK-47s.

And the fervent hope and earnest expectation of the Mayor is that criminals will be first in line to hand over their guns. Because we’re all in this together. Perhaps we could sing the Coca-Cola song while we wait at the courthouse to be disarmed.

Before you object with that tired old saw, “But I have NEVER shot any people with my AR-15!” understand we have heard it all before. While that may be true, still, if we take away your AR-15, you never WILL shoot any people with it.

Even those people who kick open your door at night to loot and rape and murder, which they might do because now they know you don’t have an AR-15 anymore.

But it’s important, says the Mayor, that we come together around this shared vision of a city that “stands up for our values”. The first step in standing strong is that you should hand over your gun. The second step might be improving the locks in your house, and perhaps applying steel armor to your doors, and bars to your windows.

Number Two. The Gateway Pundit. Biden accused of staying in illegal vacation rental.

President Biden cannot catch a break.

If it’s not the war in Ukraine, paying ransom of $1.2 billion each for 5 hostages held by Iran that they still have not turned over, Republicans dragging him through confusing accusations of accepting untold millions in bribes from China, a freak storm in Maui that ranked up there with almost losing his Corvette in a house fire, his friends in New York with their shorts in a wad over the influx of undocumented aliens because of the open southern border, now it’s a petty accusation of where he stays when he’s on vacation.

It was a simple trip to Tahoe, where the President was able to find room in a simple $18 million waterfront property owned by fellow Democrat Tom Steyer.

The vacation itself was ruined — ruined! — by that darn storm in Hawaii, or wherever, and he had to make a trip out there on Air Force One, the big airplane that has all those steps, to see some town that wasn’t even there anymore, and then talk to the crowd, or at least to the teleprompter, before he could get back to real life at Lake Tahoe in the Steyer Mansion.

And to top that off, now the press is saying that the rent he was paying to Tom Steyer was an illegal charge, because Steyer had never registered his house as a Vacation Home Rental in Douglas County, Nevada.

The absence of a permit means that Steyer faces a $20,000 penalty under county ordinance. That whiff of scandal is sure to put the President in a bad light.

Absent from this story is another question: Why on earth is billionaire Tom Steyer charging anything at all for the President to stay in his $18 million mansion? Does he need the cash flow, or what?

This is the kind of story that appears and then disappears. The news cycle will move on, it will fall off the radar, and we will never know how Tom Steyer got out of paying the $20,000 fine (because I expect he will), or how much the taxpayers paid Tom Steyer for housing the President, his entourage and the Secret Service for an 8-day stay at Tahoe.

Because I am pretty sure Joe Biden is not paying for it himself. He is on a modest government salary, after all.

Number One. RedState dot com. 14 American cities ban meat, dairy, cars by 2030.

And finally, to launch you into a weekend filled with hope and confidence in the future of this grand nation, consider this.

A visionary organization calling itself the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group has resurrected a 4-year-old position paper and presented it afresh this year. It outlines goals for making the environment better by tightening up on damaging, unhealthy and frivolous indulgences by the people.

Specifically, the C40 plan calls for limiting each resident to 0 meat consumption, 0 dairy consumption, 0 cars owned privately, 1 short-haul airline trip of less than 1,000 miles, and a maximum of 3 new articles of clothing. Per year. Per person. By 2030.

The initiative has already been adopted by 14 U.S. cities, which presumably have adopted local ordinances to make these goals reality. They include: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, LA, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Seattle.

It is not clear from this article how those cities adopted this C40 goal, or whether it was City Council action. I would also wonder if any of the residents of those cities are aware of it.

But there could be some good deals on used cars coming up. And homes in the suburbs, which are generally incorporated separate from the core city, may see a sudden spike in value. Likewise steak houses and Dairy Queens just outside the city limits might be good investments.

You see? Opportunities abound! Just think about all the good things that can happen when you live on a steady diet of pork and beans without the pork, and wear the same shirt every day, for an entire year. And learn to take your coffee black. But at least you won’t have to go to the drive through to get it!

Have a good weekend!

Curt