Twitter Employees Are Being Laid Off….

BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

THE END OF THE WORLD AS TWITTER KNOWS IT

File this under unintentional humor: Twitter employees are being laid off in San Francisco, and this morning, Reuters live-streamed employees emerging from the Twitter building with boxes in their arms. Such is the fear and loathing that the possibility of free speech arouses in the press.

IowaHawk commented:

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A number of reporters with microphones and cameras were on hand to interview sacked Twitter employees. I watched as reporters interviewed a young software engineer who emerged from the building with a box containing his personal effects. He expressed mild sympathy for the concept of free speech, but said it wasn’t free speech if one man owns a media outlet. Which makes zero sense; and, in any event, tell it to Jeff Bezos.

Musk has said that he doesn’t actually intend to fire 75% of Twitter employees, which is too bad in my opinion. But he has axed the company’s CEO, CFO, “top legal and policy executive,” and its general counsel–a step in the right direction.

(According to WEBSTER’S Home and Office DICTIONARY “TWITTER” is a noun which means “one who twits or reproaches.

It continues with twit-ter reading: a small transmitted noise like the song of the swallow: a slight trembling of the nerves: OR as a verb, to make a succession of small tremulous, intermitted noises; to move or beat tremulously.

That October 26, 1991! (Kirby Puckett came to the Wall!)

OCTOBER 26, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

THE PARANORMAL, KIRBY PUCKETT, AND ME

Do you remember where you were on October 26, 1991, 31 years ago today? Probably not. But I do. I was in Munich, on business, arriving that day from London. But let’s back up.

The Minnesota Twins were in the World Series that year against the Atlanta Braves. I was part of a consortium that had season tickets to Twins games. We had bought in when tickets were easy to get, and we had great seats–in the fourth row, right on a line between second base and first. I attended the first game of the 1991 Series, which the Twins won. Our seats were so good, who do you think was sitting right in front of me? Ted Turner, then the Braves’ owner, and Jane Fonda. Jane did the Tomahawk Chop non-stop for nine innings, but to no avail.

I left the next day for Europe. I knew the World Series games were on television in the middle of the night, but I didn’t want to stay up all night to watch them, so I followed as best I could in the British press, which reported in garbled fashion on how each “side” performed.

On October 26 I flew to Munich. I had the weekend off and was going to work the next Monday, preparing a German witness for a deposition. But this was a Friday night and I was at loose ends. So what did I do? I walked across a little square from my hotel to a neighborhood bar, where I sampled draft Bavarian beer for the first time. It was good. I returned to my hotel some hours later and went to bed.

This is when I had the only paranormal experience of my life. Some mysterious force awakened me in the middle of the night and led me to crawl across the floor–some might say I was not yet entirely myself–to an old, black and white television that was sitting on a stand in the middle of my room. I pulled the power button to turn the TV on.

By that time I had already missed some heroics by Kirby Puckett, like this catch:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1585315327457517568&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F10%2Fthe-paranormal-kirby-puckett-and-me.php&sessionId=e3967719cb4292535027f353372f35e7d586e9be&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1c23387b1f70c%3A1664388199485&width=550px

But I didn’t know that. I pulled the power button, and the TV set filled with snow that slowly resolved. I didn’t have to change the channel. It was Game 6, live from the Metrodome. I blinked at the set as the picture came into focus, trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t easy: the crowd was cheering madly, and the announcers were talking a mile a minute, way too fast for my primitive German to keep up.

But I knew what happened next: Kirby Puckett came to the plate. A Braves left-hander threw a couple of balls, and then this, which I saw on an old black and white set, to a torrent of German:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1585233895951196160&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F10%2Fthe-paranormal-kirby-puckett-and-me.php&sessionId=e3967719cb4292535027f353372f35e7d586e9be&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1c23387b1f70c%3A1664388199485&width=550px

Kirby smoked the ball, the announcers and the crowd both went crazy, Puckett circled the bases and was greeted by all the Twins at home plate. I switched off the TV and went back to bed.

The next morning I woke up, slightly the worse for wear, and tried to figure out whether I had briefly gotten up, just in time to see Kirby Puckett win Game 6 with a home run in extra innings, or whether I had dreamed the whole thing. I wasn’t sure until I called my office some hours later.

Game 6 was the greatest event in the history of Minnesota sports. It led, the following night, to Game 7, an epic pitchers’ duel in which Jack Morris went ten shutout innings for the Twins, and the Twins won the game in the bottom of the tenth. Legend has it that after the top of the 9th, Twins manager Tom Kelly approached Morris as he entered the dugout and said something like, “Tremendous game, Jack. You’ve done all you can. I’m going to the pen.” To which Morris did not respond positively. Then, the story goes, pitching coach Dick Such joined the conversation and said, “I don’t know, Tom. Jack still looks good. I think he’s got another inning in him.” Kelly pondered for a moment, and then said–according to legend–“What the Hell. It’s only a game.” And, whether that dialogue took place or not, it is a fact that, with the World Series on the line, he sent Morris out for the 10th and the win.

Sports are endlessly frustrating. Winning is hard, and there are a million ways to lose. Teams you root for are almost always rebuilding, falling short, out of contention, outclassed by the likes of the Yankees. But every once in a while, everything comes together. The team you have followed through years of bad times emerges, with enough talent and pluck to make a run. And on rare occasions, they go all the way. That is what happened with the Twins in 1987 and again in 1991, the only two championships ever won by a Minnesota pro sports franchise. It is those rare moments, even if your team ultimately falls short, that make it worthwhile to be a sports fan.

In the storied history of that 1991 season, the epic moment, the one everyone remembers, is Game 6. The climax of which I saw in a hotel room in Munich, thanks to an inexplicable impulse.

“What do you think? Effective, or not?”

 OCTOBER 27, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

A DEEP FAKE POLITICAL AD

I doubt that most political ads have much impact. To take just one example, here in Minnesota Democrats have spent countless millions on TV ads that tell voters their Republican opponents are pro-life. Point taken, but I doubt that a lot of votes have switched, although some Democrat partisans may have been motivated. More generally, most ads are negative, suggesting that the opposing candidate is Satan, more or less. I think most people discount those negative ads by about 99 percent, if they pay attention to them at all.

But here is a new development: the deep fake ad. An ad that looks like your opponent, confessing that there is no way anyone should vote for him. This ad opposes Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis. It isn’t deceptive; the ad makes very clear that it isn’t Polis speaking. But the resemblance is remarkable:

What do you think? Effective, or not? Cricket, or not cricket? What would you think if the ad were a deep fake of a politician you support? And does it matter what the fake politician says? For example, is it relevant that the fake candidate recites actual statistics, versus repeating, for instance, the Russia collusion hoax?

Have at it in the comments. For what it is worth, I am not sure what I think. This particular ad is clever and not at all deceptive. And it takes on a Democrat. But I can imagine applications of the technology to which I would object, vociferously.

“The misreading of China has its roots.”

October 27, 2022

The China Lie Exposed

By William Levin at American Thinker:

The Chinese Communist Party has held only 20 party congresses in its history, one every five years, and few as notable as the just-concluded meeting at which President Xi Jinping claimed his unprecedented third five-year term. In a two-hour address, Xi aggressively signaled that China will focus on national security, invest in a “world class military,” “develop unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities,” and unrelentingly pursue the takeover of Taiwan under the banner of “reunification.”  All this against a backdrop of asserted rising external threats from the West and a forecast of “high winds, choppy waters and dangerous storms.”

It did not take long for Chinese investors to react. On Monday, the Hang Seng plummeted 6.4% (equivalent to a 2,000 drop in the Dow Jones index), for the largest one-day drop since November 2008. The index is down 42% for the year and within 2% of its 52-week low. In the tech sector, e-commerce giant Alibaba fell 10%, bringing its losses to more than $600 billion since it peaked in October 2020. Chip stocks are being dumped in response to expected U.S. export controls. The property sector is facing unrelenting pressure from massive over-building and excess debt. Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving the country. Official and unofficial accounts track massive movements of capital to havens outside of China. All in all, quite the contrast to President Xi’s boasting rhetoric of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

Hidden in the current malaise is a far more startling fact. The Hang Seng index is now officially flat since 1997. In the comparable period, even after U.S. market declines, the S&P index is up 3.2x, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 5.9x. These numbers lay bare the fundamental lie that communism can coexist with, and channel free enterprise growth. Twenty-five years of stagnation, especially during the boom in technology, contradicts the narrative promoted by Chinese leadership, believed by many, that China will inevitably eclipse U.S. economic performance.  Doubling down, liberal pundits such as Thomas Friedman fawn over the command and control powers of the Chinese government, in contrast to our messy democracy, especially when it appeared China was in an unstoppable ascendency from the 1980s onward.

The misreading of China has its roots, as much else, in Nixon’s opening of China in 1972, which neatly works out to its 50th anniversary. Lost to current memory, Nixon was motivated to invigorate China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, a misreading perhaps understandable at the time, but that has worn poorly as China has emerged as the leading global threat to the West.  Feeding Nixon’s decision is the “useful intellect” of the story, Henry Kissinger, who even to this day retains his aura of command as America’s foremost statesman. In reality, Kissinger has been an unrelenting shill for China and Chinese interests: in books, in public pronouncements, and within the insular world of the foreign policy establishment.  It comes as no surprise that one of Kissinger’s greatest boosters is none other than President Xi, who called Kissinger an “old friend of the Chinese people.”

Due to the miracles of declassification, Kissinger’s infatuation with China, and his infatuation with himself as the instrument of global power realignment, can be heard in his own words. The ‘present at the creation’ moment is dated July 14, 1971, and it is a 27-page, single-spaced memo from Kissinger to the President — the subject lines reads, “My Talks with Chou-En-lai,” and in all caps, the words “Top Secret/Sensitive/Exclusively eyes only” can be found across the top. It opens with a flourish, “My two-day visit to Peking resulted in the most searching, sweeping and significant discussions I have ever had in government.” It ends even worse, in words that will haunt us for decades to come:

These forty-eight hours, and my extensive discussions with Chou in particular, had all the flavor, texture, variety and delicacy of a Chinese banquet. Prepared from the long sweep of tradition and culture, meticulously cooked by hands of experience, and served in splendidly simple surroundings, our feast consisted of many courses, some sweet and some sour, all interrelated and forming a coherent whole…. We have laid the groundwork for you and Mao to turn a page in history.

Eight months later Nixon is in China, stunning the world as predicted.

Tell the “miracle” story to the Uyghurs. Tell it to Hong Kong, reduced under Chinese rule to a wasteland where once stood one of the most dynamic, freest, prosperous, and pioneering cities on this earth. Tell that to the Chinese entrepreneurs now castigated, imprisoned, and whose wealth plummeted by $35 billion in response to Xi’s speech alone, compounding years of ruinous loss and unrelenting Communist government attack. Tell that to U.S. investors in Chinese companies who have seen the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index, 65 U.S. traded stocks with majority business in China, fall 78% since February 2021. Tell that to the Taiwanese who live in the shadow of Chinese invasion and worse.  For that matter, tell that to the 1.5 billion Chinese citizens, locked down in Covid, suffering the lash of Xi’s dictatorship, at the hands of 97 million Chinese communist party members.

Nixon’s big bet, schemed and delivered by Kissinger, who later in life fatuously described himself to political journalist Oriana Fallaci as the “cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse,” was a China opening leading to economic integration with the West and a moderation in Communist ideology. Xi’s speech is the latest confirmation of the strategy’s grand fail. For five decades, China has benefitted from our stolen intellectual property and military secrets.  Now, mission accomplished, Xi has set autonomy from the West as China’s goal, “in food, energy, and resources as well as key industrial and supply chains.”

As termed by economists, in the choice between guns and butter, China has chosen guns, encapsulated in Xi’s promise to deliver his world-class military by mid-century, while the U.S. has gorged on butter, leading to the alarming assessment this month that America’s military capability is “weak.” Chinese financial markets have correctly assessed the sacrifice of economic growth to militaristic strength, far ahead of policy makers.

The collapse in the Hang Seng and twenty-five years of stagnation tells all that needs to be known about Communist rule, its priorities, and its ruinous economic choices.

“Sex is a person’s plumbing and DNA!”

October 27, 2022

Why Gender Confusion is Increasing and What Can Be Done

By Rabbi Michael Barclay…at American Thinker:

As a Rabbi in Southern California, I have been confronted recently all too often with tweens and teenagers wanting to become a different sex.  Clearly a lot of this has to do with the push for gender modification from the leftist establishment in California, including especially schoolteachers who seem to think their agenda on this issue is more important than the wishes of the parents, let alone the children themselves. 

But while this external push to lose gender identity is being thrust upon our children, it seems that an inordinate percentage of them are accepting this notion of becoming “gender fluid”.  In working with youngsters in our religious school and Bar Mitzvah program (the Bar or Bat Mitzvah is the rite of passage a 13-year-old Jew goes through), it has become clear to me that we, as parents and teachers, must understand the deeper issues that are troubling young people so that we can combat this abuse of our youth by the political and leftist elite.

There has always been an extremely small percentage of people who have gender dysphoria, formerly called Gender Identity Disorder (GID).  According to DSM-5 (the 2013 official diagnostic tool of the American Psychiatric Assoc.)  it is approximately 1/100 of one percent of the population that experiences this condition. In many tribal cultures this rarity has always been recognized, and often the person with this condition is trained to be the shaman or medicine person for the tribe as they are considered special and with more potential conscious spirituality as true gender dysphoria is so incredibly rare.  And it has always been extremely rare.

But while the statistics are that less than one person in 10,000 has this condition, the media, politicians, and leftist elite would have us think that at least five percent of young people are actually transgender.  This is a disparity of a factor of 500.  Seemingly, in only a few years, there are 500 more times transgender individuals than only a few years ago. 

According to a recent UCLA report, transgender identification currently is 130 times the statistics as understood in the official DSM-5 of 9 years ago, less than the media would have us believe but still a significant increase. These disparate statistics point to one of two explanations:  either individuals were underreporting by a factor of 500, or recently people have suddenly started accepting and self identifying as transgender.  Given the political agenda to maximize this self-identification, we must look at why teenagers and tweens have suddenly started embracing this new self perception foisted upon them.

I found the answer to this question through dialogues with young people exploring their gender identity and seeing a consistent pattern.  After exploring this pattern more deeply, I believe that we all need to have a greater understanding so that we can help those young people who are dealing with gender issues and being pressured by the left into true gender confusion.

The primary challenge is that Western society in the 21^st century has conflated three different aspects of individual identity into one, and has resolved these three issues with one purported solution:  changing gender identity.

There are three aspects of identity that are related, but should never be conflated:  sex, sexuality, and energy.  While they are tangential to each other, they are distinct and separate.  It is their conflation that is causing the gender identity issues, and only through re-separating them can we begin to help young people navigate their journey of self exploration in a healthy way.

Sex is, simply put, a person’s plumbing and DNA.  All cultures throughout history recognize this truth with the rare exception of hermaphrodites or intersex, a segment of the population (currently estimated at .02 percent, or 2:10,000) that are born with both male and female physical characteristics.  But other than this rare exception (whose percentage is nearly the same as the DSM-5 statistic of true gender dysphoria), a person is born to either the male or female sex.  It is in the physical body, and in the DNA.

While elective surgery may be able to change the physical characteristics, the DNA cannot be changed.  Despite whatever hormone blockers, drugs, or surgery; on a purely genetic level the sex remains the same throughout our lives as x and y chromosomes cannot be altered.  All science agrees that our genetic identity is the same throughout our life as it was at birth, as x and y chromosomes cannot be changed.

Will Thomas views himself as a female swimmer named Lia.  But when we do not conflate the issues of sex, sexuality, and energy it is clear that he is a male from a strictly sex and genetic perspective.  God gives us our sex, and despite how someone may try, that definition is immutable since the genetics cannot be changed.

The next aspect that is currently combined inappropriately with sex is sexuality.  A person may be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, or any combination thereof.  And our sexuality may change throughout our lives for a variety of reasons.  We may be attracted to men, women, both, or neither, and that sexual self-identification can change over time.  But this sexual preference is not the same as sex. While there are many arguments over sexuality being based in nature, nurture, or a combination; it is clear that sexual preferences can change over a person’s life.

It is the third aspect of “energy” that has been entirely lost in Western culture.  And it is this aspect that may be playing the largest role in teenagers experiencing gender confusion.

Feminine energy is classically understood throughout all cultures as energy that receives and transforms.  In Chinese medicine and philosophy, it is called Yin, as opposed to male energy being referred to as Yang.  Male, or yang, is the energy that goes outwards.  An easy analogy is to look at different techniques of hunting.  A spider personifies feminine energy when it creates a web and draws in it’s prey.  Conversely, a wolf hunts with male energy as it seeks out its prey in the wild.

It is this issue of energy that, by being conflated with sex, is causing so many young people to become confused.  A young man who finds that he is full of feminine energy is being encouraged to view his sex as female, when it is only that he expresses feminine energy.  Or a tomboy who has lots of yang energy is encouraged to view herself as a boy and change their sex self-identification.  This is a travesty, and when we separate the three issues it is easy to see how their conflation causes confusion.

We all manifest male and female energy at times, but that doesn’t mean our sex changes with our energy.  All wolves hunt with male energy by going outward, but we do not call a female wolf a “he”.  Nor do we call a male spider, who spins a web and hunts with yin energy, a “she”.  Energy does not define or transcend sex in any part of the physical world.  Yet through the conflation of sex and energy, our youngsters are being encouraged to do just that:  reassign their physical sex through drugs, attitudes, and even surgery to match their energy and/or sexuality.

It is this combining of disparate aspects that is leading children to accept sex reassignment.  And in doing so, is causing pain and wounds that will be felt for a lifetime.

Let’s evaluate a specific case study.  I recently spent time with a 12-year-old girl who decided (with her teacher’s encouragement) to view herself as a transgender boy.  Throughout the first twelve years of her life, “Josephine” (as I will call her) had always been a tomboy, playing, roughhousing, and hanging out with boys.  She then experienced her first menstrual cycle, and was devastated, as she was now different than all of her male friends although she still wanted to be like them. 

Josephine’s teacher encouraged her to try out being a boy named Joe for a while, and to see how that felt.  As Joe, she was able to continue to express her male energy and play with other boys.  She was more comfortable in her social circle of boys than she would have been as a young woman, and able to avoid the seeming inner conflict between her physical body and her energy. 

Until I spent time with her, no one had pointed out that she could simultaneously be a woman and personify male energy.  Upon realizing that, she decided that she would explore that understanding rather than go down a destructive path of sex modification.  (It is an irony ignored by sex change advocates that so many teenage tomboys ultimately become well balanced, beautiful, strong, healthy adult women.)

This is the understanding that we need to explore with our children.  We need to explain to them that although these three aspects of sex, sexuality, and energy are related and tangential to each other, they should not be conflated.  This is the dialogue that we all need to have with teenagers who are considering altering their bodies to match their sexuality or energy.

Teenage years are tough, and always have been. Hormones are raging and confusing; the brain is developing at a rapid rate; society is starting to place pressures on the teenager; and the young person is filled with identity confusion as they are no longer a child but not yet an adult.  Teenagers are incredibly vulnerable, and it is a travesty that political activists are using them as pawns.

We must always be especially gentle with teenagers going through this identity crisis.  They may eventually be the one in ten thousand who really are experiencing gender dysphoria.  They are vulnerable and confused.  Everything in their life is changing, and they are desperately seeking a sense of constancy, stability, and self identification.  But we can be gentle while still teaching them of these three disparate aspects, and guide them to not conflate them together and go down a gender modification process prematurely and unnecessarily.

This is not only our privilege to do, it is our responsibility.  We must bless those younger generations by passionately combatting the political agenda of sex change through thoughtful and supportive education.

In Judaism, we say “l’dor v’dor”:  from generation to generation, we must teach truth and wisdom.  May we all have the courage to lovingly teach the next generations of the differences between physical sex, sexuality, and energy.  In so doing, may we heal and hopefully prevent the many wounds that young people are experiencing as they progress down a road of self awareness.

Rabbi Michael Barclay is the Spiritual Leader of Temple Ner Simcha; the author of “Sacred Relationships:  Biblical Wisdom for Deepening Our Lives Together”, and a columnist for PJMedia.  He can be reached directly at Rabbi@NerSimcha.org