The Women Show the Way.

The Women's Tennis Association cancels its Chinese tournaments in protest of the treatment of their colleague and probable rape victim, Peng Shaui.

Here is the statement.

It shouldn't be remarkable, but it is.

And in related news, cheers to the students at the Catholic University of America, who have secured a commitment to divest from companies profiting from the destruction of Uyghurs. 

Watch them like hawks and make sure they do it, student activists. It's going to take unrelenting pressure and years to achieve. 

And now to the boos: the unutterably corrupt International Olympic Committee wonders what the fuss is. They talked to Peng and she sounded great!

Christiane Amanpour, committing journalism, notes that the IOC hasn't bothered to release the video of the call.  

And, finally recognizing that they are being seen as the cash-worshiping whores they are, the IOC insists they really care, had a second call with Peng and are engaged in "quiet diplomacy."

Translation: they are going to grind their teeth at the WTA, fake empathy and pray to Mammon it all blows over.

The Corona-Killing Bullet?

Maybe, but don't break out the champagne flutes yet.

Pfizer announces that its new antiviral pill cuts down the risk of hospitalization and death by almost 90 percent.

An experimental coronavirus pill reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in high-risk people infected with the virus, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Friday.

The effect of the drug, a five-day regimen designed to block the virus from making copies of itself, was found to be so strong midway through the study that an independent committee monitoring the clinical trial recommended it be stopped early. The data has not yet been published or peer-reviewed. Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla told CNBC that the company would submit data to U.S. regulators before Thanksgiving.

* * *

 David Boulware, an infectious-disease physician-scientist at the University of Minnesota Medical School not involved in the research said the findings were “pretty impressive.” He noted the drug was most effective when given earlier, within three days of symptoms, but it remained highly effective even when given five days after symptoms appeared — which may better reflect the real world use of the drug.

“That’s great. That’s a huge impact,” Boulware said.

Two dampeners:

1. As mentioned in the article, peer-review is necessary.

2. As a gent who got a suddenly-necessary Pfizer booster two weeks ago yesterday, understand that I am not inclined to pop corks for Pfizer's more grandiose claims. 

IF it is true, this is great and glorious news--a literal game-changing life-saver.

If so, it will turn corona into something more akin to the flu. Not to mention taking the steam out of the boiler of our society-straining vaccine wars. 

But let's wait and see.

When bad things happen to bad people.

This blog has had a special dislike for Clinton bagman and unrepentant pro-abort Terry McAuliffe, stretching back to February 2007.

Back then, McAuliffe was being considered for membership in the pre-Anschluss Knights of Malta. A storm arose, led by the formidable and much-missed Kathy Shaidle. 

Mirabile dictu, McAuliffe was denied membership.

[For the unclear, this was back in the day when the Catholic Church still occasionally taught there could be eternal consequences for political actions. 

Or eternal consequences for anything short of being a mafia assassin. 

Frankly, maybe not even then, given the functional universalism coursing through the ecclesial veins.

It's hard to explain, and a story for another time.]

But anyway, more bad things happened to Terry McAuliffe almost fifteen years after the formerly-independent Knights said no: the voters of Virginia emphatically said "NO" to being governed again by this unpleasant hustler.

This calls for the playing of one of my favorite 45s from my youth.

45s being another concept difficult to explain to the yutes, but no matter:

 

Now if only our town voted to save our history museum from being defenestrated by our once-sensible mayor...but we won't know for sure until later today.

 

Finally--a pregnancy discrimination law that is clear.

Genuinely good news from the Times--federal pregnancy discrimination law may finally grow some teeth.

I loathe the national Chamber of Commerce, but they are on the right side of this one. 

In 2019, after Democrats took back the House, the bill finally received its first congressional hearing. In another breakthrough, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an often right-leaning group, threw its weight behind the PWFA, because the bill’s “end goal was something we could support,” explained Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the organization. The lobbying group collaborated with the bill’s supporters to revise the legislation in an effort to win bipartisan support.

“The folks that we worked with on this bill are not folks that we are usually in agreement with,” said Mr. Freedman, but “giving pregnant women the ability to stay in a workplace is a good thing, and we wanted to find a way to get to that endpoint.”

The two sides found middle ground: creating a formalized negotiation process and clarifying definitions for particular terms, including “known limitations” stemming from pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, that would remove ambiguity for both employees and employers.

Last September, the PWFA passed the House with an overwhelming 329 votes, including 103 Republicans. “I don’t think anybody had that number in their head,” Mr. Freedman said.

But the bill didn’t advance to the Senate — in part because of a contentious election season — and had to be reintroduced in the current legislative session, where it stands today.

 

Another "Gorbachev's a Pizza Hut pitchman" moment.

 I'm probably not in the best place to process the various Arab state/Israel treaties.

 

That's for a couple of reasons.

 

First is still trying to process my mother-in-law's passing.

 

The second is that I was a student traveler in West Germany back in the late summer of 1989. I was there when the Soviet bloc started to disintegrate, and East Germans were pouring across the falling Iron Curtain.

 

I grew up with the worry of a Third World War lingering somewhere in the back of the mind, Guards divisions pouring through the Fulda Gap followed by mushroom clouds. That shapes my view of Communism in general, which is a good thing in our increasingly-nutso environment. 

 

But in 1989, all of a sudden, we saw the Domino Effect in reverse, with Soviet satellites peacefully bidding adieu to the hammer and sickle. 

 

That epochal historical happy ending was more than I had ever hoped for, and it was truly glorious. Even if it didn't lead to the necessary historical reckoning that the fall of Nazism did.

 

And a few years later, we were treated to the surreal experience of watching the former leader of the USSR sell American pizza.

 

 

 

That's pretty hard to top for a child of the Cold War.

 

And while I don't think the array of deals between Israel and various formerly-officially-hostile Sunni Arab states does top it, it is at least in the discussion.

 

It's certainly another seismic political event I did not expect to see in my lifetime. And the fact it was brokered by Donald Trump of all people helps crank up the WAT factor to near-Gorby Pizza level. 

 

May the Lord grant that this bear fruit in a lasting peace.