A most politically incorrect man

A woman dressed as a nun is standing outside the London Palladium with a placard, warning about ‘an evening with a religious extremist’. She refers to Jacob Rees-Mogg, who sold all 2,300 seats at the venue in a fortnight — a feat that enraged his critics all the more.

The nun eventually found a loudspeaker to address Spectator subscribers, who waved cheerfully as they filed in to the theatre. This stage has played host to entertainers like Bruce Forsyth, Marvin Gaye, Tommy Steele and Jimmy Tarbuck — and now, the backbench MP for North East Somerset, offering an evening of political discussion. We live in strange times.

He arrives late, fresh from a meeting with the European Research Group of Tory Brexit MPs, where they had to accept their game was up. He says he’s ready for no deal. ‘But I don’t think we’ve got the votes in parliament for it,’ he admits. So he has changed tactics, and is ready to back an extension of Article 50 in the hope of improving Theresa May’s deal. ‘If three months’ delay is the price we have to pay to get out properly… well, three months in the history of our great nation is a mere bagatelle. We can live with that. So we are very optimistic and we will make sure that Brexit succeeds.’

I put it to him that, right now, Brexit looks like a mess — and one made worse by his botched attempt to depose the Prime Minister, further diminishing her authority. ‘I think perhaps you have a kindly view of the authority that the Prime Minister had earlier in this process,’ he says. So that’s his defence: that her authority couldn’t have got any lower? ‘Broadly: yes,’ he replies. Her deal was a dud, so he felt he had to act. ‘You can snipe from the sidelines, you can give anonymous briefings, you can feed poison into people’s ears. Or you can stand up and say: “Actually, this isn’t good enough — we need a change.” That’s what we said. It didn’t work and therefore we had to accept that result.’

The debacle over the leadership challenge seems to have done nothing to dent his popularity — not just with Brexiteers, but also with those struck by his cheerful defence of unpopular positions. The protestor dressed as a nun (later thwarted in an attempt to smuggle stink bombs into the theatre) had a point often made by his critics: that his religious views — he opposes gay marriage and abortion, even in cases of incest and rape — are illiberal and extreme. He replies that this is simply the teaching of a Catholic church with a billion members. ‘So me and a billion extremists. Even more than the 17.4 million I agree with on Brexit. And I get accused of being an extremist for that as well. I think it’s a term that gets bandied about by people who don’t want to engage in any intellectual argument.’

But, he’s asked from the floor, what about Tim Farron, who quit as the Lib Dem leader saying it wasn’t possible to be a Christian and lead a mainstream party? You can’t be a Christian and lead the Liberal Democrats, he says. ‘But that’s hardly a mainstream party nowadays. They hounded out Tim Farron. The Conservative party, in this sense, is much more liberal. I’m very lucky, I do appreciate that.’ And the reaction his religious views so often draw? ‘I only get the reaction from a nutter who dresses up as a nun. I’m not appealing to the nutter vote.’

So who does he appeal to? When I stood at the door on the way in to see who turned up, I was struck by how many members of the Rees-Mogg family were coming through the doors, nanny and all. Gillian, his mother, told me that she helped kick-start his investment career when he inherited £50 aged ten, and was given the choice to spend or invest it. He chose the latter, and a year later turned up to the GEC annual meeting to complain about the dividend policy. In his late twenties, he set up Somerset Capital Management, which manages £5.3 billion of funds. He works there one day a week, paying himself a cool £500 an hour.

Excessive? ‘You wouldn’t get a lawyer for that,’ he laughs. ‘If you create a business that employs 50 people, has an office in Singapore and an office in London I think you deserve to be paid for it. I’m a capitalist,’ he says. ‘When I set up Somerset Capital Management with my partners we operated from the basement of my house in London. We didn’t have an office. The first few months’ salaries were paid from my own bank account. You are entitled, when you take that risk of setting up a business, to make money out of it. If people don’t, we have no prosperity in this country.’

The audience loved it, but one dissenter asked if £500 an hour was a bit much when he’s voting for nurses and doctors to have pay freezes. ‘Completely irrelevant comparison,’ he snaps back. ‘It’s nothing to do with being worth anything. It’s what is produced by the company that you have and therefore the value that comes from that company.’

There have been so many rumours about the Moggster that it’s very hard to discern fact from fiction. Is it true that, as a father of six, he has never changed a nappy? Yes: ‘I don’t think Nanny would think I was competent at it.’ ’ That he has never washed up the dishes? ‘Well, there’s a washing machine!’ But is he in the habit of stacking or emptying it? ‘Not routinely, no’. And is it true that he said Theresa May was ‘absolutely brilliant and will do a fabulous job’? He beats his breast. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’

The final question from the floor: how will he celebrate Brexit day? ‘The problem with the 29 March is it’s in the middle of Lent,’ he says. ‘But the great thing about the Catholic church is that there is usually some dispensation. So I must find out which saint’s day it is on the 29 March. If we have really left, then that saint will be so honoured. With Pol Roger, with Bollinger — you name it, that saint will be honoured.’

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Boys Will Be Girls?

A kerfuffle over two boys competing in track as girls highlights the insanity of "transgenderism."   

“Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.” —a tweet by former women’s tennis star and current LGBT activist Martina Navratilova

On Feb. 7, “transgender” athletes finished first and second in the 55-meter dash at the state of Connecticut’s open indoor track championships. The winner was Terry Miller, a boy who set a girl’s state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Second place finisher, Andraya Yearwood, is also a boy who completed the dash in 7.01 seconds. The third-place competitor, who is female, finished in 7.23 seconds. Miller and Yearwood also ran first and second in last year’s 100-meter state championship race, and Miller won the 300 meter this season as well.

According to Transathlete.com, a website that insists transgender athletes “should be allowed to use locker room and bathroom facilities without harassment and discrimination,” Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high-school athletes to compete without restrictions. In seven states, athletes are required to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, switching only after undergoing sex-reassignment procedures or receiving hormone therapy. The remaining 26 states have no policy, or handle the issue on a case-by-case basis.

The common denominator with regard to coverage of this story? Walking on eggshells, lest “progressive” sensibilities be offended. The Associated Press typifies that approach, stating, “Critics say their gender identity amounts to an unfair advantage, expressing a familiar argument in a complex debate for transgender athletes as they break barriers across sports around the world from high school to the pros.”

There is no “complex debate.” There is the simple biological and chromosomal reality that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, men are stronger and faster than women — and transgenderism is engendered by a psychological condition known as gender dysphoria. Yet as Dr. Paul McHugh, the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, warns, challenging progressive dogma elicits hysterical blowback. “Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle,” he asserts.

Tragically, vested interests currently prevail. “We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said female competitor Selina Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

Not anymore. Because Soule finished eighth in the 55 meter dash, she missed qualifying for the New England regionals by two spots. Thus if Miller and Yearwood had not run, she likely would have been on her way to a meet where her talents would have been seen by more college coaches — possibly eliciting scholarship offers.

Regardless, Glenn Lungarini, executive director of the Connecticut’s high-school-sports governing body, toes the politically correct line. “This is about someone’s right to compete,” he insists. “I don’t think this is that different from other classes of people, who, in the not too distant past, were not allowed to compete. I think it’s going to take education and understanding to get to that point on this issue.”

Really? Then why not openly allow boys to compete in the same races? If the sole determinant of one’s gender comes down to nothing more than the assertion of such, there is no substantial difference between the two positions, other than the aforementioned — and seemingly automatic — surrender to progressive dogma.

Joanna Harper, a medical physicist and “transgender” runner from Portland, Oregon, suggests that there should be a standard based on hormone levels. “The gender identity doesn’t matter; it’s the testosterone levels,” she asserts. “Trans girls should have the right to compete in sports. But cisgender girls should have the right to compete and succeed, too. How do you balance that? That’s the question.”

(“Cisgender” is the near-pejorative term “transgender” advocates assign to people who still “identify” with their birth sex.)

Navratilova answered the balance question in an op-ed published on Feb. 17 by the UK’s Sunday Times. After reiterating her position that allowing men to compete as women “simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair — no matter how those athletes may throw their weight around,” she addressed such “solutions.”

“Simply reducing hormone levels — the prescription most sports have adopted — does not solve the problem,” she wrote. “A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood. … Training increases the discrepancy. Indeed, if a male were to change gender in such a way as to eliminate any accumulated advantage he would have to begin hormone treatment before puberty. For me, that is unthinkable.”

For the dedicated dogmatists of progressivism, nothing is unthinkable. Despite extensive data collated by Dr. James Cantor revealing “60-90% of trans-kids turn out no longer to be trans by adulthood,” Boston Children’s Hospital endocrinologist Norman Spack revealed in 2013 that his idea of industry practice “is to prevent pubertal progression in the first place.” He advocated “biological clock-stopping drugs” for boys as young as 12 and girls as young as 10, lest the biological immutability of testicular development and breast development, respectively, make it harder to transition.

In short, members of an ostensibly “first do no harm” medical community are advocating for life-altering procedures that will ultimately be rejected by a minimum of six in 10 who received such procedures in the preadolescent stage of their lives.

That’s not medicine. It’s child abuse.

Regardless, Navratilova’s candidness has cost her. Homosexual advocacy group Athlete Ally has cut ties with the tennis champion because she perpetuated “dangerous myths” about “transgender” women. “As an organisation dedicated to addressing root causes of homophobia and transphobia in and through sport, we will only affiliate with those committed to the same goal, and not those who further misinformation or discrimination in any way,” the group stated.

Where are the so-called feminists? Likely calculating the political costs of championing the genuine victimhood of real women forced to compete against biological males over that of yet another “protected class” whose arrogance is exceeded only by their militancy. The parents of short-shrifted biological females? Also walking on eggshells due to that same militancy.

The female athletes themselves? Force-fed a transgender agenda as early as kindergarten, all the attendant propaganda included.

Why do Americans tolerate this government-sanctioned, tyranny-of-the-minority insanity? Insanity epitomized by the reality of a dominant, record-setting NCAA track star competing as a woman — one year after competing as a man at the same level? Moreover, why shouldn’t a majority of parents, as opposed to ideologically driven school officials, have the ultimate say with regard to dissemination of transparently political agendas in classrooms?

Americans need to understand that if biological and chromosomal reality is “negotiable,” every aspect of reality is equally negotiable.

Is the nation ready for “two plus two equals five” — and other equally totalitarian permutations?

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Smollett Lies Expose a Culture of Lying to — and About — the Police
    
Lawyers representing Jussie Smollett, the actor who apparently lied to the Chicago Police Department about an alleged hate crime, called him a “man of impeccable character and integrity.”

Before Smollett’s tale of being of a victim of an attack by two men yelling pro-Trump slogans fell apart, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., one of many who vouched for his character, blamed President Donald Trump for creating an atmosphere that encouraged such an attack. Waters said: “I know Jussie. I love him. His family’s a friend of mine. I know his sisters, I met his mom, and I called already to Jazz, one of the sisters, to talk to her about what’s happening, what’s going on.”

This “man of impeccable character and integrity” appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” two weeks ago, where an oh-so-sympathetic Robin Roberts interviewed him. Smollett, at times tearing up, described the pain of being attacked by racist Trump-supporting homophobes. But he also described his second painful experience, that of being doubted. “It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black,” Smollett told Roberts, “I feel like the doubters would’ve supported me a lot more, and that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.”

Smollett’s alleged hoax raised many interesting questions, one of which is this: How often do people lie to or about the police?

In 2012 in the city of Rialto, California, with a population of approximately 100,000, cops were randomly assigned body cameras based on their shifts. Over the next year, a follow-up analysis showed use-of-force incidents on the shifts with body cams were down 59 percent compared to those without cameras. But something else rather extraordinary also happened. Complaints against all Rialto police officers — with or without body cams — were down 87.5 percent from the prior year.

Why? It was not because officers changed their behavior. They applied the same training they used before body cams. It was the civilians who changed their behavior. It turned out that when civilians knew they were being recorded, they behaved better and stopped making false accusations. Civilians — aware that they might be taped — became less confrontational, followed officers’ instructions more readily and did not engage in the kind of resistant behavior as before random cops were required to use body cams. As a result, officers did not have to use the kind of force previously needed.

A 20-year veteran Rialto police officer told me: “Newspapers make you think that the cameras made us change what we did and how we went about our business ‘because the cops were being watched.’ That’s not true. The cameras made the civilians stop lying about us, reduced the mouthing off and the kind of resistance we used to see.”

The city of Rialto is not alone in experiencing an almost 90 percent drop in officer complaints as a result of body cams.

A 2016 Cambridge University study of five police stations in the U.K. (in England and Northern Ireland) and two in the U.S. (including Rialto) found the same result. Complaints against the police fell 93 percent when some officers were randomly assigned body cams. Jayne Sykes of the West Yorkshire Police Department said: “Anecdotally, in terms of bringing offenders to justice, our Crown Prosecution Service have said to us on numerous occasions that the video footage has tipped the ballot in favor of prosecution, whereas without it, they may not have been able to prosecute. And also, again anecdotally, we’re getting more early guilty plea from suspects which saves the victim the trauma of having to go to court and give evidence.”

Barack Ariel from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, one of the authors of Cambridge’s study, says that in the original Rialto study, the drop in complaints against police translated into a savings of $4 in complaint litigation for every $1 spent on the installation of body cams.

In the last two years, there have been several hate crimes later exposed as hoaxes. Nikki Joly, a Michigan LGBT activist lost his house in a 2017 fire, which killed his two dogs and three cats inside the home. Two days later, the activist exhorted his followers “to be angry, be very angry.” The police quickly determined it was arson, while the FBI investigated it as a hate crime. As a result of his “plight,” the activist, called “citizen of the year” by a local newspaper, received $58,000 in donations. But a year later, the police charged the activist with setting the fire.

When Smollett’s hate crime claim imploded, Roberts called Smollett’s story “a setback for race relations.” About the assertion made by many blacks that cops engage in “systemic” or “structural” or “institutional” racism, one must ask this question: What impact do false accusations against cops play in pushing the “cops are out to get us” narrative?

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Another criminal Mexican illegal opens fire on an American police officer

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week, Napa County sheriff’s deputy Riley Jarecki stopped to examine a red Honda in a parking lot. She was speaking with the driver when the man pulled out a handgun and shot the officer. The cop then pulled her service weapon and fired “at least 15 shots” into the vehicle, all captured on her body camera.

Jarecki was not yet aware that the driver, Javier Hernandez-Morales, 43, also had a loaded rifle in the Honda. The “undocumented immigrant” died at the scene, but there was more to the story.

Hernandez-Morales, a Mexican national, had been deported three times, twice in 2007 and once in 2010.  ICE had issued four separate detainers related to arrests on suspicion of driving under the influence, battery on a peace officer, selling liquor to a minor and unknown probation violations. As the Chronicle reported, “none of the detainers was honored by jail staff.”  If these and other detainers had not been refused, according to immigration officials, “this incident may have been prevented.”

Jon Rodney of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which fights deportation, did not decry the Mexican criminal’s attack on a female American police officer, any other crimes Hernandez-Morales had committed, or his unlawful presence in the country. As Rodney told the Chronicle,  “We have seen how ICE and the president politicize tragedy, and I think that is irresponsible and wrong.”

Napa County Undersheriff Jon Crawford went on record that by pulling a loaded pistol and firing at officer Jarecki, the Mexican intended to kill her. Crawford did not speculate on other goals the violent Mexican criminal might have had in mind. At this writing, pro-sanctuary California governor Gavin Newsom has not weighed in on the case, and Californians might watch how attorney general Xavier Becerra responds.

The pro-sanctuary Becerra is unconcerned about the immigration status of the MS-13 gang members who have murdered 14 during a reign of terror in Mendota, near Fresno. So former congressman Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate, is not likely to side with officer Riley Jarecki.

California’s Democrat attorney general has also been rather quiet about the murder of police officer Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji, by Mexican gang member Paulo Virgen Mendoza, also known as Gustavo Perez Arriaga and other names. The Mexican killed Singh in Newman, California, on the day after Christmas, and new developments in the case are proving educational.

Sanctuary advocates proclaim that illegals commit fewer crimes that legitimate citizens. And without sanctuary laws, Californians are endlessly told, the “undocumented” will not call the police. None ever called the police on the murderer of Ronil Singh. In fact, they helped him escape.

As the Modesto Bee notes, last week a federal grand jury returned a nine-count indictment against Erik Razo Quiroz, Adrian Virgen Mendoza, Conrado Virgen Mendoza, Erasmo Villegas Suarez, Ana Leydi Cervantes Sanchez, Bernabe Madrigal Castaneda, Maria Luisa Moreno. Their aid to the fugitive Mendoza, “included transporting and housing him, providing him with clothes, money and a cell phone, and wiring money to smuggle him out of the country.” And the indictment adds “ID fraud to previous charges.”

Mendoza’s brothers, Conrado Virgen Mendoza and Adrian Virgen-Mendoza, are “charged with using a false Social Security number and possessing a false lawful permanent resident card, or green card, to secure employment.” Another relative, Erasmo Villegas-Suarez, is charged with “using a false Social Security number to gain work.”

As this confirms, the Mexican nationals who aided the fugitive cop killer were not “undocumented.” They were false-documented, like virtually all foreign nationals who violate U.S. immigration law and continue to live and work in the United States. Document fraud is a serious crime but when committed by Mexican nationals in the country illegally, California takes no action. That applies whether or not the false-documented illegal is a previously deported criminal.

Repeatedly deported felon Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, or whatever his real name is, was not handed over to federal official and proceeded to gun down Kate Steinle in San Francisco. In similar style, gang member Paulo Virgen Mendoza, or whatever his real name is, had previous encounters with the law but enjoyed protection from federal immigration officials.

That’s why officer Ronil Singh, who came to the United States to become a police officer, is dead. Mendoza returns to court on April 8. Prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Javier Hernandez-Morales, or whatever his real name is, also enjoyed protection from immigration authorities. That’s why he was able to commit crimes and attempt to kill Napa County sheriff’s deputy Riley Jarecki. Had the Mexican been successful, other false-documented illegals would surely have helped him flee.

Fortunately, the quick-acting Jarecki was able to take down the shooter, who had other loaded weapons in the vehicle. Napa County is investigating the incident, and Californians should not be surprised if Jarecki winds up disciplined for deploying excessive or, the current favorite, “disproportionate” force.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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