Sleepy Joe Mails It In

He gives the impression of someone 

forced to pretend to care

by Christopher Roach for American Greatness

I rarely watch TV, but I check-in occasionally to understand the nonstop propaganda stream influencing normie America. During my visit, I happened to catch Joe Biden’s speech about the Maui wildfires.

It was shockingly bad. His delivery was lethargic and disinterested. His mumbling and inconsistent dropping of syllables reminded me of a kid struggling with third-grade phonics. He read off his notes, kept his head down, and did not emphasize anything appropriately.

Heroically giving up a day of vacation, he gave the impression of someone who was forced to pretend to care. This dreadful scene highlighted his earlier, insulting offer of $700 to displaced families, a pittance compared to their needs, and a mere fraction of the billions we have sent to Ukraine.

As usual, Biden made these events about him. This is a narcissist’s way of mimicking empathy. “Oh something bad happened to you, well something equally bad—worse actually—happened to me!” He thought a minor house fire, in which he almost lost his beloved Corvette, equaled the pain of people who just lost their homes and kids.

Obviously, I don’t think Biden or any president is responsible for natural disasters. These things happen.  Nor do I think, generally, the federal government should be the “go to” agency for handling the response to such events.  States and cities are supposed to take up the laboring oar on natural disasters. But you still expect the federal government to juice locals’ efforts, throw some funding around, and maybe say a few words that show solidarity.

Unfortunately, state government in Democrat-dominated Hawaii appears completely incompetent. The guy in charge of water decided to delay its release when it was requested for firefighting, possibly because of his earlier-stated concerns about equity. He resigned from office in ignominy (and probably fear).

There are also unexplained stories of police stopping people from fleeing or sending them back into danger. Some people suggest as many as 1,000 have died. This is not merely a tragedy, but a series of failures that deserve a thorough investigation.

The media frequently praises Biden for his world-famous empathy. He’s the lovable Uncle Joe, who can relate to the common man because of his humble beginnings and early-life tragedies.

This is all made-up propaganda. It is true, he had some difficult situations early in life, including the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident. But, for years, he has milked these stories for clout, even as he repeatedly lost his cool with regular voters, frequently insulting them when they did not kiss the ring.

Biden’s most notable quality is not his empathy but his low and venal character. He has taken bribes on a grand scale. He has lied about the bribes and the role of his self-destructive son in securing them. He lied about his son’s love-child. He has lied about his eldest son, Beau, who died of cancer, suggesting he actually died in Iraq. He lied about his resume and plagiarized a speech during his 1987 presidential campaign, which lead to him dropping out in disgrace.

The thread running through all of these lies is that they are all designed to make Joe look good. These are not lies to shield an innocent person’s reputation or to protect the honor of some august institution, but petty lies to avoid embarrassment, to conceal his shady finances from scrutiny, and to accrue additional power.

He is not unique in this regard. Politicians can usually be counted on to have significant narcissism and self-regard and a fair bit of dishonesty. Rare is the person who enters politics chiefly motivated by a policy mission and public spiritedness. Because of self-selection, you wind up with a bunch of morally flexible people, more committed to their own advancement than every other consideration. By itself this is no different from Hollywood or sports, but for the fact elected officials get their money either directly from taxpayers or from violating their duties to the public.

On a smaller scale, the entire managerial class is similarly ambitious. These are people who dreamed of being in charge since they were in junior high. They dutifully “played the game” and joined the extracurriculars, Ivy Leagues, and then the top law firms and management consulting companies before landing in the imperial capitol. The archetype is someone like Anthony Fauci or James Comey.

The naked ambition and high self-regard among the elected political class does not bother the adjacent strivers of the managerial class, because both groups seek power and prestige. Moreover, the politicians need the help of the managerial bureaucrats and reward them accordingly. It is a symbiotic relationship.  Though the GS-14s and Senior Executive Service folks may not ever be president, they console themselves that they might someday be the “power behind the throne” when they become deputy undersecretary of whatever or the head of a well-financed think tank.

Like Joe, the managerial class is lately both incompetent and devoid of energy. Things that are supposed to work—the power grid, our billion-dollar weapon systems, vaccination campaigns, water supplies, and the economy—do not work as well as they once did. They don’t work because the people selected for these roles are not as conscientious as their predecessors and have fewer life experiences than those who have worked in the private sector. Their chief skill is bureaucratic intrigue and risk aversion, because the system prioritizes everything except competence and results. 

Extremely satisfied with the system that has promoted them, those near the top do not see anything wrong with the system’s performance. Their measure of its performance is their own status, not the ostensible mission, in this case, of stopping fires from consuming entire cities.

Joe Biden is more dependent than usual on the managerial class, as they brought him to power through a rigged election. His empathy and concern for the common man is entirely performative, and lately he can barely put together a believable performance. His failure to act like a normal human being in Hawaii is another reminder of his and his apparatchiks’ contempt for ordinary Americans.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- August 29

 

Save the Rule of Law By Destroying It? ~ VDH

We're reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Some truths are so staggering in their ramifications that Americans simply shrug and tune them out as if strangers in a strange land.

Is their current bewilderment because modernist America is unrecognizable —a nonexistent border, downtown homeless juxtaposed to hipster professional elites, DEI racial essentialism, cities reverting to precivilizational wastelands, millions exiting blue states to red, an FBI and DOJ gone rogue, the normalization of violent theft and assault, biologically born men sandbagging women’s sports and their locker room privacy?

We are reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal, as a single generation has done its best to undo the work of a prior 12 generations. Consider the following:

Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate. While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.

Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time?

The prosecutors’ immediate lawfare agendas seem transparent enough. They wish to bankrupt candidate Trump with endless legal costs, and humiliate him with his mugshot blasted over the Internet, and put endless Lilliputian legal ropes over a shackled candidate Gulliver, and inflate the ego and agendas of local prosecutors, and purportedly earn Trump empathy enough to win the nomination only to be hemorrhaged with still more indictments, gag orders, and court appearances to bleed him out in the general election.

Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given. Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?

Would any of the 90 something indictments for “crimes” of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?

Why are these indictments of alleged wrongdoing of years ago now in summer 2023 suddenly being synchronized in leftwing jurisdictions of New York, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta with the beginning of the 2024 election cycle?

Are any of the indictments against Trump also applicable to others?

Alvin Bragg’s charge of campaign finance violations (Hillary Clinton, 2016)?

Jack Smith’s allegations of encouraging mass civil unrest (Kamala Harris, 2020)?

Illegally removing and possessing classified federal documents (Joe Biden 2009-2022)?

Letitia James’s lawsuit alleging financial irregularities and fraud (Al Sharpton 2009-2014)?

Fani Willis’s claim that Trump was seeking to sabotage the constitutional duties of state electors (Martin Sheen, and an array of B-list Hollywood actors, 2016) and colluding to interfere with an election (Fani Willis 2023-4)?

Will any losing Republican candidate in a contested election any longer question the integrity of questionable balloting—in the manner of Vice President Al Gore in 2000, Sen. Barbara Boxer and 32 Democratic congressional representatives in 2004, candidate Jill Stein or Hillary Clinton in 2016, or Stacey Abrams 2018—and thereby risk financially and career-crimpling indictments?

Will conservative district attorneys in places like Wyoming, Alabama, or West Virginia now seek to indict a Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Gavin Newsom to earn notoriety, to weaken the opposing party, and to leapfrog to higher office in the manner that we should expect a Fani Willis or Alvin Bragg to be currently planning?

When Republicans retake the Congress and White House, will they begin indicting all the weaponized prosecutors who colluded to exempt a grifting Hunter Biden for five years? Will they try Joe Biden as a private citizen for his prior corruption over the last 15 years?

Why would Donald Trump believe the 2020 election was “rigged?” Was he cribbing that belief from liberal journalist Molly Ball’s braggadocious 2021 Time essay? After all, she outlined what she called a leftwing “cabal” and “conspiracy” to change voting laws, turn on/turn off the 2020 Antifa/BLM street protests, absorb the work of registrars, and suppress unwelcome social media news.

Was it more morally suspect to question the ethics surrounding the election year 2020 or for Mark Zuckerberg to infuse $419 million to absorb in asymmetrical fashion the work of the registrars in key swing precincts?

A Cardboard Cutout President

We are witnessing the daily deterioration of President Biden to the point that caricature and jokes about his senility are no longer funny. He is not just an embarrassment but becoming an existential danger to the country. Does anyone believe that in a national crisis over Taiwan or nuclear escalation in Ukraine, Joe Biden would or could make the final decision?

Biden cannot finish a teleprompter sentence without slurring his words, losing his place, or screaming and whispering in incoherent fashion. If that is his public persona, what he is like in private sessions of governance?

He spontaneously both shouts angrily and creepily whispers for effect. Moving a lightweight aluminum beach chair becomes a Herculean task.

In almost every impromptu speech Biden flat-out lies or spins self-serving autobiographical fantasies—often in the midst of foreign dignitaries, grieving families, and refugees from devastating natural disasters.

Biden often does not know where he is on stage or where he is to enter or exit. He is one fall from oblivion.

Not since Woodrow Wilson’s final year in office, has any president simply been unable to fulfill his duties, both physically and cognitively.

Or perhaps the country is in the same position as when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt in late 1944 was deemed just hale enough to get elected and continue Democratic control of the White House, but deemed not healthy enough to finish his first year in office—necessitating the rapid removal from the ticket of the socialist Vice President—and an otherwise likely 1945 President—Henry Wallace.

Yet there has been almost no serious speculation in Congress or among the cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment. This silence is doubly strange given the Left’s former fixation between 2017-21 with removing Trump by any means possible—including invoking the 25^th Amendment.

That silly effort led to the surreal—the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and the deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein scheming to wiretap Trump in private conversations to reveal his supposed craziness–or the Congress dragging in an incompetent Yale psychiatrist to testify that at a distance she had diagnosed Trump as demented.

Do we recall ex-Pentagon officials and officers talking openly about a military coup to remove the supposedly touched commander in chief?

Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs contacted the head of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Trump might be unhinged. So is Gen. Mark Milley now making yet another call to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Joe Biden is dangerously disturbed?

It is precisely that entire cast of characters that now sit mum as Joe Biden believes we are fighting in Iraq against the Russians or that his late son Beau died in action in Iraq, or it is impossible to square the tens of millions of dollars that flowed from abroad to the Biden accounts with any concrete expertise rendered or income reported as taxable.

Is the tolerance of Biden’s senescence because his blank stares and mental confusion prove useful to the Left by exempting the president from offering any defense of his mostly defenseless policies or defending his absurd claims to know nothing of the Biden family grifting operations that were predicated on his own offices?

Or do the puppeteers, the Obamas, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the hard leftists of the party find a non-compos mentis Biden mannequin a useful veneer in pushing through their extreme agendas? Or does the media call the shots, especially after they propelled a basement bound Biden to the White House?

Mainstreaming Corruption

There have been a few corrupt presidents in our past, who (as in the case of Lyndon Johnson) left office far richer than when they entered or were surrounded by rogues (Grant and Harding) or were masters of leveraging and grifting long-term contracts and networks in their lame duck tenures to ensure their impending multimillionaire status the day they left office (the Clintons and Obamas).

But never in memory has an entire extended presidential family been involved in selling influence for millions of dollars in quid pro quo lucre—the vast majority of such ill-gotten gains likely untaxed, by being channeled through sham companies, foreign deposits, fake names and alias email accounts.

Never has a corrupt presidential family itself offered so much proof of its own guilt. Do the Democrats have any idea of the smelly Biden albatross hanging about their collective necks?

How much longer can they continue to dismiss the communications on the Hunter Biden laptop?

Or the testimonies of IRS whistleblowers?

Or the assertions of Biden family business associates?

Or the statements of relevant Ukrainian oligarchs?

Or the latest assertions of Viktor Shokin?

Or the extraordinary efforts of the Bidens to stonewall subpoenaed documents, use fake names and shadow email accounts, compromise federal prosecutors, appoint sham special counsels, and use media toadies to the point of embarrassment to hide the ugly truth?

In sum, what were the Bidens so afraid of that prompted them to corrupt the DOJ and FBI to stonewall any discussion of the huge cash infusions that came from abroad into their family coffers?

Americans have impeached or nearly impeached presidents before for abuse of power, lying under oath, or supposedly using government to pursue their own personal agendas or harass their enemies.

But never has a president been so clearly compromised by bribery from shady foreign government-related grandees in expectation of favorable treatment.

In other words, there is growing evidence that Joe and Hunter Biden, and likely Jim Biden as well, made millions of dollars on the hopes that then Vice President Biden, and perhaps one day a future president Biden, would alter or compromise U.S. foreign policy on the expectation of getting rich.

The State Department’s Ukraine team deemed Viktor Shokin making progress in rooting out corruption. So why did Joe Biden without consultation fire him? Did Biden put his own financial interests above the country’s—in a fashion that the Founders worried was impeachable “treason?”

If the current investigations are not halted or compromised, we may soon learn why the Constitution explicitly specified bribery and treason as an ironclad cause for impeachment.

Can Americans even comprehend that they have elected a dishonest man to the presidency who is protected by his own senility, his decades-long everyman construct of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton, his usefulness as a prop to the radical leftwing agenda, and the defensive and offensive weaponization of the criminal justice system?

Can Americans digest that instead of campaigning against Donald Trump, outdebating him, outspending him, and outfoxing him, their government must unleash kindred prosecutors to destroy Trump by blowing up the entire tradition of blind American jurisprudence?

Are the media and left claiming that to save the rule of law from Trump, they must first destroy it?

Samantha Power Wrote The Book On Genocide, So Why Is She Ignoring It?

If she wanted to, Samantha Power could make genocide prevention a priority for the Biden administration.

Eileen Brino reporting for The Federalist

While in Fiji for a recent Indo-Pacific Security Conference, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN and current USAID Administrator Samantha Power spoke about climate change and tweeted a video of herself playing rugby. She did not mention the threat China poses to the region or any of China’s human rights abuses, including the genocide against its own Muslim population.  

Back in 2021, she tweeted a video of herself playing volleyball in Darfur, Sudan. While in Darfur, she never mentioned China’s role in funding the genocide there. Her priorities seem to have changed since she won the Pulitzer Prize for A Problem from Hell, her 2002 book about America’s history of failing to intervene to stop genocide. 

The Chinese government is committing a well-documented genocide, and Power knows it. Forced sterilization and forced abortion for the purpose of eradicating an ethnic and religious group meet the legal definition of genocide. Yet since being named USAID administrator, she has not spoken much about it publicly. (I found a single vague reference to it in a speech at the National Press Club in 2022.)  

There are more than 1 million Muslims being enslaved, forcibly sterilized, and tortured in concentration camps with a “shoot to kill” policy for attempted escapees. Prisoners range in age from 15 to 73. In women’s camps in Xinjiang, guards use what has been referred to as an “electrified stick,” which is essentially a cattle prod, to repeatedly rape the detainees. One Uyghur woman, who was forced to handcuff prisoners before they were tortured, managed to flee to Kazakhstan. In an interview, she said she still hears the screams and will never stop hearing the screams.  

In A Problem from Hell, Power refers to a different type of screamer. “Screamers” were “those frustrated few who spoke up in the newspapers and public meetings against Nazi atrocities.” According to the old Power, “all of the latter-day Screamers treated silence as if it were a further crime against humanity.” It turns out, the new Power is not a Screamer. 

A Problem from Hell brilliantly and passionately details America’s catastrophic failure to meet its obligation to stop genocide. Power famously criticized the Clinton administration’s use of the phrase “acts of genocide” to describe the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994. In the final days of the Trump administration, the State Department officially called the actions of the Chinese government genocide. The Biden administration has not revoked this designation, yet Power is still not screaming.  

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide has been binding international law since the 1950s and requires the international community to intervene to stop genocide. The beloved neoliberal principle, “the Responsibility to Protect,” also requires action in the face of genocide. Yet the administration she works for barely mustered a hollow condemnation and limited sanctions against small numbers of individuals and companies from Xinjiang, even though forced Uyghur labor is being used in factories outside of Xinjiang.  

These and other symbolic gestures, like clothing retailer H&M refusing to use cotton suppliers from Xinjiang, will not change China’s behavior. They are not really intended to pressure China because, in the end, China makes them rich. These companies and politicians are merely playacting to evade the substantive costs of disentangling themselves from China. And when bureaucrats like Power refuse to “scream,” it makes it easier for them to profit from the genocide.    

Despite the “rules-based” international order, the Chinese government has flouted international human rights law with impunity for decades inside and outside of China, particularly throughout Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, children as young as 9 work in dangerous conditions in Chinese-owned cobalt mines. Apple and other technology companies use cobalt in lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and laptops. Chinese middlemen in companies like Congo Dongfang International Mining pay the children about 65 cents a day for the cobalt they mine.  

In 2020, before working for the Biden administration, Power gave a speech explaining how China undermines human rights wherever it has influence, particularly at the UN. For example, in order to protect its oil interests in Sudan, China threatened to veto any Security Council resolutions critical of the Sudanese government during the genocide in Darfur. China also prevented the deployment of peacekeepers there.

In 2015, about 700 Chinese peacekeepers were deployed to South Sudan where they essentially protected Chinese oil fields and not civilians. As fighting continues in and between Sudan and South Sudan, both countries remain dependent on China. The only condition China has placed on them is that they do not recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. So, one of the few things these famine-afflicted, war-torn enemies agree on is that Taiwan belongs to China.         

The Chinese government harvests the organs of political prisoners; arrests and “disappears” publishers, book-sellers, and protesters in Hong Kong; plunders the waters around the Galapagos Islands; detains and tortures lawyers, human rights activists, scientists, and journalists; and imprisons and fatally beats Tibetans for handing out pamphlets or teaching their language to their children.

The government’s strategy for containing the coronavirus included installing bars over the doors and windows of homes as well as barricading and welding apartment doors shut to prevent people from leaving. This resulted in a number of people starving to death, including a boy with cerebral palsy whose father and only caregiver was suspected of having coronavirus and so was forcibly removed from their home and quarantined. As China’s power grows, so does the threat to human rights everywhere. Samantha Power used to say this out loud.    

Power should be “screaming” about human rights and the genocide in China. If she wanted to, she could make genocide prevention a priority for the Biden administration.

A Problem from Hell details how the promise of “Never Again” proved hollow in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Srebrenica because government officials knew genocide was occurring but chose to do nothing. Did Samantha Power change her stance on genocide?

Maybe former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden chose her for top positions in their administrations not because of her specific concern for human rights but because of her support for military intervention more generally. Either way, her name must be added to the list of government officials who knew and chose not to “scream.”

What Happened to the Child in Video Openly Questioning His 'Transition' and Crying During the Surgery?

Jennifer Van Laar reporting for RedState 

Over the weekend we covered the heartbreaking story of a child whose medical "transition" was captured on video. One clip that was posted to X/Twitter, which is from a 2012 NBC News story, shows an 11-year-old child who was a biological boy preparing to have hormone blockers implanted. In one clip the child, whose name had been legally changed from Joseph to Josie, asks his mother, "Sometimes I think I’m a boy kinda.. Will you love me if I’m a boy?" In another, filmed at the doctor's office, shows Josie crying and clearly uncomfortable as the hormone blockers are implanted.

We heard from many of our readers who were upset that the article was behind the paywall, feeling that the powerful videos and the doubt Josie showed as this life-altering procedure was carried out should be shared far and wide. We share that view. The reason it was placed behind the paywall, however, is because recently big tech has ramped up censorship efforts by demonetizing articles that violate the woke agenda, mainly articles pertaining to climate change, COVID/vaccines, and transgender issues. Every time an article is flagged for demonetization, that hurts the domain's overall "brand score," which can eventually lead to full site demonetization. (My counterpart over at PJ Media, Paula Bolyard, wrote an excellent piece going into detail on this topic.)

I had planned to write a piece today explaining our decision to put that piece behind the paywall and provide links to the videos on X/Twitter for our readers to share, and to just leave it at that. But what I found when curiosity led me to look into what happened with Josie and her family after that changed my course.

First, I found the entire video from that NBC News Dateline story about Josie.

It's 22 minutes long, and both heartbreaking and disturbing - but worth the time to fully appreciate what is happening. As it turns out, while Josie started living as a girl at age 6, by age 9 her mother, then known as Vanessa, was attempting to have Josie medically transitioned by use of both hormone blockers and estrogen therapy. To do this, she flew Josie to California to meet with the doctor who ultimately implanted the hormone blockers, Dr. Johanna Olson, at Children's Hospital LA. At age 9. Since endocrinological testing revealed that Josie wasn't starting puberty at that time, Olson didn't take action at that time.

From this clip, in which Dr. Olson says that since kids make the decision to kill themselves at 12 and 13 they should be able to make decisions on undergoing medical sterilization (while ignoring the clear and significant differences between the two situations, in which one is medically assisted and the other clearly is not), it's clear that Dr. Olson has a bit of a Dr. Mengele streak.

There are quite a few disturbing incidents (from a psychological and parenting perspective) portrayed in the video that bolster the argument that children seeking hormone therapy and puberty blockers aren't capable of giving informed consent - something rational adults already understand. I'll list a few here, and I'd challenge those who think that even teenagers are capable of making such decisions to watch the video and honestly say that Josie was making an informed, non-manipulated choice.

The video (from 7:17-8:36) shows that even before age 9 Josie believed that she was starting puberty and was anxious about this - so anxious that, according to Vanessa, Josie nearly performed "surgery" on herself.

She was in the bathroom, and she's standing in the shower and she's got her penis in one hand, and her nail clippers in another hand. It was like she was building up her determination to go through with doing it. Then I ran in, literally, and grabbed the nail clippers from her hand and squeezed her to me.

Then, when Dr. Olson told the family during Josie's visit at age 9 that the lab results didn't show the onset of puberty so any treatments would have to wait, Josie said:

I just want it to get done...like, I want to get surgery right now, but you can't.

I wanna go through puberty... so I can be like all the other girls.

Vanessa explains to Hoda Kotb, the Dateline interviewer:

Once she really understands that she's not gonna walk out the front door with breasts, I think she's gonna be really disappointed.

At this time, Josie is 9 years old. Girls are going through puberty much younger these days, but not many are sprouting breasts at age 9, and as a girl who once went through puberty (fortunately for me, even slightly visible changes didn't start until I was about 12), I don't remember being excited about going through puberty or knowing anybody who was excited about it. In addition, why would this child think that one doctor's visit would result in breasts? That alone shows what unrealistic expectations Vanessa was setting up in her child.

Between age 9 and 11 Josie voiced uncertainty on more than one occasion, and the interactions between mother and child show that Josie is willing to change beliefs based on what the mother wants. This clip was shared in Bonchie's piece, and on X/Twitter.

In the full video, immediately after the clip above ends the following interaction takes place:

Vanessa: "I feel like maybe there's a part of you that's afraid to tell me what you really want. What if I said, 'Oh, please, don't be a girl.'"

Josie: "Then I guess I would be ... a boy. I don't know."

Vanessa: No, honey."

Josie: "I need to listen to you. You're my mom."

Vanessa: "Well, yeah, you need to listen to me about what's healthy to eat, and you need to listen to me about what time to go to bed. But you are the one -- I need to listen to you."

Josie: "Yeah, what if you said I needed to be a boy and you made me? I'd have to."

Vanessa: "No, no."

A minute or two later, this interaction occurs.

Josie: "You look like you're about to cry."

Vanessa: "I'm just kinda surprised by some of these answers today. It's the first time you've given them to me."

Vanessa then tells the camera:

For her to have any indecision now, I don't know what it's rooted in, and I really need to find that out. Everything I thought I knew is kinda in question.

Hoda Kotb then interviews Josie, and asks why Josie asked Vanessa that question.

You know, my dad, he -- when i started to change, he was a little sad because he wanted his little boy back. So I didn't want the same thing to happen to my mom, like being sad all the time.

Why does this child shoulder that burden? Josie's words also show that perhaps dad wasn't fully on board with what was going on when Josie was younger.

After that, "Josie and her psychologist discussed that moment of wavering, and just a few weeks shy of her 11th birthday she told us she never really changed her mind; she still really wants to be a girl." I bet they discussed that "moment of wavering," and it's quite convenient that the confirmation came just before that next visit with Dr. Olson.

As Josie and Vanessa sat in Dr. Olson's waiting room for that next visit, Vanessa noted that Josie "looked really nervous." That's the visit in which the hormone blockers were started.

The NBC News piece ends with Josie reading an essay about what the future looks like, including, "I'm going to be a mommy." It's not clear that Josie understands that estrogen therapy does not create a womb, or exactly how that dream of motherhood can be achieved.

New Names, New Experiences

When scouring the internet to see what happened to Josie and Vanessa Romero, I found a reference in one Reddit thread to a new name that Josie apparently was going by, and a new name for Vanessa. It seems that less than a year after that Dateline episode aired, Josie was going by the name "Sadie Croft" and Vanessa was going by "Sage." When Barack Obama mentioned the LGBT community in his second inaugural address, Sadie wrote a speech calling him out for not mentioning the trans community, too. Sage uploaded it to her Facebook page, set to public, and it went viral. From the Daily Mail's coverage:

When Obama addressed the nation in his inaugural speech on Monday, he became the first president in history to speak about gay rights during the momentous swearing-in ceremony.

But while many in the LGBT community lauded his support, one 11-year-old transgender girl was left disappointed that he failed to address her community too.

Sadie Croft, who transitioned to a female when she was in kindergarten, has now written an eloquent essay in light of the speech, explaining how transgender people also need the nation's support.

Here are a few paragraphs from Sadie's speech:

The world would be a better place if everyone had the right to be themselves, including people who have a creative gender identity and expression. Transgender people are not allowed the freedom to do things everyone else does, like go to the doctor, go to school, get a job, and even make friends.

Transgender kids like me are not allowed to go to most schools because the teachers think we are different from everyone else. The schools get afraid of how they will talk with the other kids' parents, and transgender kids are kept secret or told not to come there anymore. Kids are told not to be friends with transgender kids, which makes us very lonely and sad.

Aside from being factually incorrect about the rights transgender people have, Sadie's speech reflects a level of extreme indoctrination. The fact that Vanessa/Sage has documented so many parts of her child's life for the camera then sought out publicity through the Dateline piece and publicizing Sadie's speech/essay is alarming as it shows a strange type of stage mother syndrome.

Sage told the Huffington Post that she encouraged Sadie to write the speech as 'it might help empower her and overcome any feelings of oppression'.

'When she chats with people, she introduces herself as, "Hi, I'm Sadie, my favorite color is pink, I'm vegan, and I'm transgender. Who are you?"' Sage said.

Sadie attends public school in Arizona after being home schooled until this year.

Sadie, who has a younger sister adopted from China, is passionate about the environment and wants to work for Green Peace when she grows up - as well as being a mother.

Sage is now a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Tucson, Arizona. On her Trans Youth Family Allies page in 2013 she said she "aspire[d] to work with LGBTQ youth at the crisis intervention level," and her current professional page lists LGBT issues as an area of specialty.

There's no mention of Joey/Josie/Sadie's father in any subsequent news pieces or on Vanessa/Sage's internet profiles.

I have found social media profiles that seem like they could belong to Sadie, but am not going to link to them. In my opinion, Sadie is a victim of medical malpractice and parental neglect/abuse, and as such deserves privacy. Sadie's story is a devastating reminder of what many children are being subjected to today, and not just from parents and activist doctors, but from activist legislators and teachers, as well.

In all likelihood, this story will be demonetized too for spreading the truth. We need your support more than ever to keep doing what we do. Become a VIP member here and use promo code SAVEAMERICA for 50% off.

Eminem Sends Vivek Ramaswamy a Hilarious Cease and Desist Letter

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Remember Eminem? If you are at least in your mid-30s, you probably do. In a move that would be called cultural appropriation in today's political climate, the white-boy rapper rose to the top of the game in the early 2000s with his hit Lose Yourself. 

Times change, though, and instead of garnering international attention, Eminem is now sending cease and desist letters to people who rap his songs in public. From the real Slim Shady to a complete dork in just a few short decades. 

The real Slim Shady has stood up - and has told 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy to stand down, and stop rapping to his tunes on the campaign trail. 

The rapper Eminem reached out to the music licenser BMI and asked that the Ramaswamy campaign's license to use his music be revoked, according to a letter obtained by DailyMail.com.

In a letter dated August 23, a representative for BMI informed the campaign's lawyer that the label had 'received communications from Marshall B. Mathers, III, professionally known as Eminem, objecting to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign's use of Eminem's musical compositions (the "Eminem Works") and requesting that BMI remove all Eminem Works from the Agreement.'

The background here is that 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy decided to rap Lose Yourself while at the Iowa State Fair in early August. Was it hilariously cringe and ill-advised? Sure. But it was a harmless showing from a candidate who was trying to garner attention. Eminem getting chapped over it is worse than saying nothing, and it's also hilarious.

Of course, we know why he sent the letter. Eminem is a big fan of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In 2020, he dropped this supposedly free-style video trashing Donald Trump. 

Ironically, Ramamswamy's anti-war platform matches Eminem's past proclamations about government policy much better than anything the Biden administration is currently putting out. Partisanship is a heck of a drug, though, and Mr. Mathers appears to be a total sell-out.

Regardless, this is just something Republicans have to live with. Celebrities are overwhelming left-wing and they are overwhelmingly petty as well. Every cycle, there's some cry session over a GOP candidate for some office playing a song at a rally or something. To try to stop someone from doing what amounts to karaoke, though? That seems like a bit much and completely unenforceable. Against my ears' better judgment, I'm encouraging Ramaswamy to organize an encore performance.