Random News and Notes 23 December

Happy Festivus, may all your grievances be aired and feats of strength be shown!

We start today’s news in California where St. Benitez strikes again. Federal district court judge Roger Benitez – who earned his saintly moniker via multiple successive pro-2A rulings – just put the kibosh on the California’s Parental Exclusion Policies, which required teachers to hide students’ social gender transitions from parents without consent.

. . .precedent-setting victory, a federal court has permanently blocked California AG Rob Bonta and the CA Dept. of Education from forcing teachers to lie to parents about their own children’s secret gender transitions—declaring parents have a constitutional right to know and teachers have a constitutional right to share the truth.

Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, middle school teachers who refused to deceive parents, brought the class-action lawsuit after mandatory training put them in an impossible position. The order mandates schools notify parents of gender incongruence and bars concealment, with training updated to affirm these federal rights.

Big win in the fight against the transing of our kids.

The State Department announced it was recalling 30 senior diplomats from around the globe.

The WSJ headline notwithstanding, only a small number of actual ambassadors are being recalled. The vast majority of the 30 are Chiefs of mission and thus career State employees.

The Doom Pixie got herself arrested again, this time in London. Greta Thunberg was protesting in front of an insurance company building when the arrest was affected.

The group her sign says she supports, Palestine Action, is a proscribed terrorist group in the UK and Greta was banged up on charges of displaying an item (in this case a placard) in support of a proscribed terrorist organization (in this case Palestine Action) contrary to Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

There are a couple of members of Palestine Action currently starving themselves in HM prisons after breaking into an RAF facility. The U.K. banned Palestine Action in July of this year, putting it on the same level as ISIS or Al Qaeda. Being a member of the group is now a crime punishable by 14 years in prison. 

Staying in England for a moment, Sainsbury’s – the 2nd largest Grocer in the UK – pulled a holiday card from its shelves. Why? Because it was deemed ‘offensive’ to the autoparts community. Apparently it was called ‘transphobic’ and allegedly ‘invalidated the lived experiences of trans people’. 

Yeah, that is the card. Yeah, Sainsbury’s caved.

I’m so, so f*cking tired of the perpetually aggrieved assholes everywhere. We need to collectively sack up and tell these whinging twatwaffles to sit down and STFU. Invalidates the lived experience? The world doesn’t revolve around you.

The Department of War announced a new ship building program yesterday. The Trump class battleships will – if constructed as laid out – will supposedly be the most powerful battleships ever.

I say if because NAVSEA – the Navy department in charge of shipbuilding – could screw up a wet dream. Don’t believe it? Take a look at the LCS nightmares or the bullshite they pulled with the Constellation class frigates. Both classes of the Little Crappy Ship have major issues. The Independence class Trimarans have hulls that crack badly enough that it limits the sea state they can operate in. And the monohull Freedoms have high speed vibrations in the driveline that destroy combiner/reduction gear sets.

Maybe I’ll do a whole piece on the Constellation fiasco. You’d be shocked at what and how that whole mess went down. Let me know if that is something you’d like to read.

Former Senator Ben Sasse announced some sad news this morning. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

. . .But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective: “When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.” I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices, Ben — and the Sasses