☕️ SWAPPING ☙ Thursday, April 4, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Taiwan earthquake metaphors; political earthquake from party-swapping state senator; jabbed conservative Rep's blood clot; landmark anti-transgender study; Texas' border battle grows; bee news; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup today includes: massive Taiwan earthquake shakes down buildings but mortality is fortunately low; Nebraska state senator swaps parties and maybe changes everything; jabbed conservative lawmaker gets blood clots and ultra-rare diagnosis; landmark study quashes most current transgender theory; Texas expands its border battle in lots of great ways; and heartwarming science news about our tiny friends, the humble bumblebee.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 It is perhaps a sign of the times that Taiwan’s massive 7.5 (+/-) magnitude earthquake yesterday nearly didn’t make the cut for today’s post because, miraculously, “only” nine folks have been reported killed. But the images of extensive, widespread property damage were horrifyingly breathtaking, with the most amazing thing being there are so few reported deaths.

Right through this morning when I began, media reports were still publishing on the continuing rescue operations.

Now, it might be too soon, but I just couldn’t help it. The metaphors from some of the astounding Taiwan images were irresistibly suggestive:

In any event, please pray for the people of Taiwan.

📈 Newsweek ran a terrific, narrative-bending elections story yesterday headlined, “Nebraska Democrat switching to Republican is major victory for Trump.” This highly ironic state-level story is garnering national attention, and driving democrats even more insane, because due to a wild confluence of coincidences, it could change how the presidential race turns out.

But first, Trump had nothing to do with it. In a press conference announcing his swap, Nebraska State Senator Mike McDonnell explained he first joined the Democrat Party as a young man back in the 1990’s — but as a pro-life Catholic democrat. McDonnell said democrat officials in Nebraska gave him an ultimatum: unless he started voting pro-abortion, he cannot participate in the party, be a delegate, get on a committee, or have any meaningful future in the democrat party.

So what did you expect him to do? He switched parties and became a Republican.

McDonnell’s party swap is getting national attention because, believe it or not, it could affect the outcome of the Presidential election. One CNN commenter reporting on the story wordily noted, “The shift to a filibuster-proof Republican majority could pave the way for significant legislative changes in Nebraska, including the potential adoption of a winner-take-all electoral system with implications for national elections."

It requires a little more explanation. During Presidential elections, 48 states allocate electoral college votes on a “winner-takes-all” basis. That’s how candidates “win states” on election night. For instance, Trump is expected to win Florida, and take all its 25 electoral college votes, even though he may not win every Florida county. But Nebraska has a different and nearly unique electoral college system, where its 6 electoral college votes are awarded piecemeal between the presidential candidates following a complicated allocation scheme. (Maine is the only other state to do this.)

The result of all this complicated individualism is nobody cares much about Nebraska. It could only possibly make an electoral difference in the extremely unlikely event the presidential race came down to razor-tight margins, which isn’t likely to ever happen for a lot of reasons.

But there’s a twist! A bill pending in Nebraska’s legislature, LB764, would transform Nebraska’s electoral college from a bizarre, Maine-like outlier into a regular “winner-takes-all” system. And — believe it or not — if that happens, some models predict that little Nebraska and its six electoral college votes could tilt the race safely in Trump’s favor.

So that’s what’s making national democrats madder than a swarm of disturbed honeybees over McDonnell’s treacherous party swap.

But there’s another highly ironic part of the story. For months, democrats have been salivating about the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and tossed the abortion battle back to the states. Democrats cannot wait to run on the abortion issue, everywhere, all the time. But the abortion issue backfired in McDonnell’s case; democrats’ irrational insistence on making abortion their top, inflexible, unwavering issue drove McDonnell out of the democrat party and right into the welcoming arms of the Republicans at the exact best time.

And that one little change — directly caused by democrats’ stubborn intransigence on abortion — might make all the difference.

In another wild 2024 surprise, it no longer seems so much like revealed knowledge that the abortion issue must help the democrats in this election. Fascinating, as Spock would say.

💉 Local NBC affiliate WCBD-TV ran a very SADS story yesterday headlined, “Rep. Lauren Boebert hospitalized with acute blood clot, diagnosed with May-Thurner Syndrome.” Conservative firebrand Lauren Boebert (R-Co.), 37, experienced a terrifying emergency medical scare on Monday, but was successfully treated at her hometown hospital for an acute blood clot that made her left leg suddenly and unexpectedly swell up. Doctors diagnosed Lauren with, you guessed it, an ultra-rare blood disorder.

Her doctors theorize the clot resulted from all Lauren’s travel, with its attendant dehydration and extensive sitting on airplanes, combined with her super-rare May-Thurner syndrome, which had narrowed the arteries in her left left. On Tuesday, surgeons successfully removed the leg clot, and Lauren is already back on the campaign trail where she belongs with a brand new stent holding open her previously clogged vein.

As you can imagine, social media speculation immediately surged, and with gusto. During the pandemic, Boebert was a fierce anti-mandate warrior and most folks were convinced there was no way she ever accepted the jabs.  But we finally found it. On August 13, 2021, Lauren published an op-ed with Fox News under the title, “Rep. Lauren Boebert: COVID vaccine mandates vs. personal freedom – here's how to decide what's right for you.”

In her op-ed, Lauren explained both that she is intensely private about her medical situation, and that her whole family was jabbed:

As a congresswoman, I have never publicly advocated for or against taking the vaccine. I’ve never revealed my private health information, although I’ve made it clear that in the past my husband and I have made the choice to be vaccinated and to vaccinate our children.

When I say to beware of the "Fauci Ouchi," it is a way to cut through the clutter and communicate that the heavy hand of government should never threaten you with taking an injection you may be skeptical of or are unwilling to take. One of President Trump’s great accomplishments was Operation Warp Speed, which ushered in COVID-19 vaccines in record time.

I am proud to stand on the side of personal freedom. Have a private conversation with your medical doctor and make a personal decision that is right for you and your family. 

For what it’s worth, my quick review this morning of Lauren’s 2024 tweets do not reveal any mention of the vaccines at all. In tweets before 2024, Lauren has only ever referenced the shots in the context of mandates, and has never criticized them directly, questioned whether they’re dangerous, or even hinted they might be hurting some people.

Since I believe we are all struggling through a manmade public health crisis, people’s jab status should be fair game. When someone dies or gets sick with one of the now well-recognized conditions, I believe it’s reasonable to ask the question. I hope and pray Lauren’s blood clot is caused, as her doctors believe, by easily-changed lifestyle issues and a manageable, rare, vein disorder.

🔥 Uh oh! The burgeoning billion-dollar neo-castration industry may have just had its walnuts lopped off. The Daily Mail UK ran the narrative-bashing story yesterday headlined,  “Most gender-confused children grow out of it, landmark 15-year study concludes - as critics say it shows being trans is usually just a phase for kids.”

The article reported on a February study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior titled, “Development of Gender Non-Contentedness During Adolescence and Early Adulthood - Archives of Sexual Behavior.” Over a span of 15 years, researchers in the Netherlands tracked about 3,000 11-year-old kids, roughly half male and half female.

Researchers found overall that 78% of subjects consistently reported the same positive feelings about their gender over the 15 years. Of the ones who were unhappy with their real gender, nearly all of them — around 19% of the total — eventually settled down and became content. Only about 2% of the subjects were less comfortable with their gender at the end of the study.

The researchers concluded that questioning one’s gender, or occasionally wondering about life on the other side of the gender fence, might just be a normal part of human development:

The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.

We used to call them tomboys, and they were lots more fun to play with than the other girls. (We still couldn’t spar and wrestle with them, not the same way, because they always got hurt easier than boys. They were still fun to climb trees with, taunt neighborhood bullies, do dumb dares, and lots of other stuff together.) But nowadays, at the first sign of a young lady’s interest in boy stuff, her parents fretfully schedule an appointment with the family doctor to talk about intervention.

Thanks to these Netherlands researchers, the question now is: should doctors be required to inform parents of potentially transgender kids about this study, especially when talking about invasive interventions like puberty blockers and surgeries?

Or should we just let kids be kids?

🔥 On tuesday, Fox News ran a super encouraging story headlined, “Texas installs more razor wire fencing along border.” The Texas National Guard is now stringing concertina wire fences all along the Mexican border around El Paso.

Skeptical and perpetually unsatisfied online commenters complained that border jumpers can just pick up some bolt cutters at the local Casa Depot and cross illegally anyways by laboriously clipping their way through the concertina wire as easily as eating a bag of cool-ranch Doritos.

Thus, it’s a very good thing that Texas is enthusiastically arresting migrants for cutting down their border fences as criminal mischief and destroying state property:

In related news, also Tuesday, the Border Report ran its story headlined, “Texas charges more migrants for cutting razor wire at border.”

According to the Border Report, on Tuesday, two Brazilian men and one Ecuadoran national appeared before the El Paso magistrate. The illegals whined they did not have enough money to post a $1,000 bond — no tengo. But the judge — unlike judges in New York City — declined to reduce or waive bond, “based on circumstances and your lack of status in the United States.”

Lo siento mucho.

Progress! Slow, but it’s progress.

🔥 Finally, after sixteen-hundred consecutive stories about ‘Disease X,’ we got some good news from science. The Washington Post ran a surprisingly encouraging and optimistic story last week headlined, “Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?” Why yes, yes it does. According to WaPo, America’s critically important honeybee population has somehow survived decades of disaster and rebounded to an all-time high. From the USDA’s five-year survey:

How could this happen? The Post’s reporter buzzed around, doing some actual investigative journalism, and tracked the majority of the bee increase to Texas. It turns out that in 2012, Texas passed an agricultural property tax exemption for — you guessed it — beekeeping.

Several other states have followed suit; I happen to know Florida has similar rules. Pay less property tax by keeping bees. So simple.

The bee bounceback is wonderful news, but we’re not back in the woods yet, if you see what I mean. The colonies, even the kept colonies, continue collapsing much more often than they should from fungi and parasites. Natural bee colonies, which for obvious reasons are much harder (and riskier) to survey, may not have rebounded in the same vigorous way that kept bee colonies have improved.

The WaPo story ended with the heartwarming suggestion that, if you really want to help the bees, plant some flowers. Win-win.

Have a tremendous Thursday! And buzz on back here tomorrow for more Coffee & Covid.

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