Monthly Archives: November 2017

Obeying the Law

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In a piece about President Donald Trump’s domestic business policies—specifically, his administration’s lawsuit to block the merger of AT&T with Time Warner Inc and his parallel move to facilitate other kinds of close relationships between companies like AT&T and Time Warner, The Wall Street Journal described a rationale for these apparently conflicting moves: follow existing law, rather than piling on regulation after regulation to govern (new) behaviors.

[T]he actions reveal one consistency, and what might be viewed as an emerging Trump administration regulatory philosophy: instead of new bright-line rules, such as those put in place under the Obama administration, it is stressing the enforcement of longstanding laws and regulations.

Indeed.  A properly free, capitalist market will do its own regulation just fine, with customers voting—and enforcing—with their dollars.

And

The moves are a shift in emphasis from the approach taken by the Obama administration, which in 2015 adopted highly specific rules governing [for instance] internet providers….

Which were simply insulting to adult Americans.  We don’t need to be told, down to the veriest jot or tiddle, how to perform in the market.  We can operate just fine without Government’s micromanagement.  Better, even.

And there’s the illogic of new regulations: if current law or regulations are being disregarded (hence the push for new regulations), how is it possible to expect any new regulations to be followed?

Baristas, Bikinis, and Harvey Weinstein

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Everett, WA, has passed two ordinances that presume to define “lewd” behavior and forces employees to stop wearing bikinis on the job or otherwise showing “too much” skin.  Everett, it seems, has too many coffee shops that employee bikini-clad baristas to suit the prim town fathers.

After all, they claim,

The skin-flaunting coffee servers could turn men into the next Harvey Weinstein.

This is just projection.  These Liberals, with their two ordinances, confess their weakness of character, their own lack of morality, their own inability to resist temptation, and they insultingly assume that all of us are as weak, amoral, and temptation-accepting as they are.

Happy Thanksgiving

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I first posted this in 2011.  I think it bears repeating today.

Today I thought I’d share some thoughts on the matter offered by other folks who are a bit more articulate than I.  In the meantime, be thankful for who we are and where we are: whatever straits we in which we find ourselves, we’re orders of magnitude better off than most everyone else in the world.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
-George Washington, 3 October 1789

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. … No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
-Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863

We are profoundly grateful for the blessings bestowed upon us: the preservation of our freedom, so dearly bought and so highly prized; our opportunities for human welfare and happiness, so limitless in their scope; our material prosperity, so far surpassing that of earlier years; and our private spiritual blessings, so deeply cherished by all. For these we offer fervent thanks to God.
-Harry S Truman, 22 November 1950

Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day. Rooted deeply in our Judeo-Christian heritage, the practice of offering thanksgiving underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation and our firm reliance upon Him from Whom all blessings flow.
-Ronald W Reagan, 27 November 1986

This Thanksgiving, as we enjoy the company of family and friends, let us gratefully turn our hearts to God, the loving Source of all Life and Liberty. Let us seek His forgiveness for our shortcomings and transgressions and renew our determination to remain a people worthy of His continued favor and protection. Acknowledging our dependence on the Almighty, obeying His Commandments, and reaching out to help those who do not share fully in this Nation’s bounty is the most heartfelt and meaningful answer we can give to the timeless appeal of the Psalmist: ‘O give thanks to the Lord for He is good: for his steadfast love endures forever.’
-George H W Bush, 14 November 1990

And then enjoy yourselves; have plain, raw fun.  That’s not just allowed, it’s a Good in its own right.

Affirmative Action Liberal Style

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I’ve written before about the inherently racist and sexist nature of the Left’s “affirmative” action programs.  Here’s another example of that, courtesy of Harvard University.

The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the use of race in Harvard University’s admissions practices and has accused the university of failing to cooperate with the probe, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department is investigating complaints that formed the basis of a federal civil lawsuit filed in 2014 in Boston, according to the documents. That suit alleges Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-Americans by limiting the number of Asian students who are admitted.

Apparently, the only thing affirmative about such programs is the affirmation of the Left’s view of minorities (and of women, come to that) and their ability to compete on a level playing field, an affirmation first made appallingly plain by President Woodrow Wilson (D, and proud Progressive):

[S]egregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen [of the black press].

Wilson held this position because he considered blacks inherently inferior and so needed to be protected from competition he assumed they could not win.  Today, the Left takes the same view, using a different tool. Today, the Left’s “affirmative” action also assumes blacks (and women) cannot compete on a level playing field, so it gives, openly and blatantly, additional weight to race and gender—because without that additional weight blacks and women can’t compete.

In Harvard’s case, too, the “affirmative” action program also apparently affirms that Americans with Asian heritage are so inherently superior that they must be held back so that those inherently inferior blacks (and women, mind) can keep up.  It’s unimportant to the Left that this denies those held-back Americans their own equal opportunity right, the right as another Progressive icon, Theodore Roosevelt, put it at Osawatomie, Kansas, that

each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.

Go figure.  And then go vote next fall and again in 2020.

Charlie Rose is…Embarrassed

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Read the whole thing over at the Washington Post, it’s a long and shameful description of NLMSM icon Charlie Rose’s fall from grace—and a shocking between-the-lines read that Rose got to that position of grace in the first place—but I’m struck by a couple of comments in particular that Rose has made about these revelations and associated accusations.  The first is this gem:

I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times….

Wow.  How does Rose suppose his embarrassment compares to the humiliation and damage suffered by those eight (and more?) women he abused?  And his abuse was insensitive behavior, yet….

And this one:

I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings….

Now, as readers of my stuff know, and particularly from what I’ve written in this sort of scandal recently breaking, I’m a firm believer in innocent until proven guilty at trial, and Rose should be afforded the same consideration, but—again, wow.  “I did some of this stuff, but not all of it; and it was all a big misunderstanding, anyway!?”  This utterly destroyed what was otherwise a (structurally, anyway) sound apology.

Separately, but just as important, how is it possible that CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg TV were unaware of these abuses over that long stretch of time?  Because no formal complaints were made?  Who believes that?

That would be utter nonsense, unless we were to believe that those three teams of executives, every single one of them high-powered, highly intelligent, highly alert, fully grown adult humans were in fact just a couple of monkeys busily hearing no evil and seeing no evil.

Every organization has its rumor mill; these abuses were being talked about around the water coolers, in the wash rooms, in workers’ cubicles.  It boggles the sensibility to claim that these things didn’t eventually bubble up to “management” separately from formal complaints.  It boggles the sensibility yet further, that having heard these rumors, the executives were so lacking in initiative that they couldn’t look into them on their own initiative.

Furthermore, at least one knew from direct testimony.  Here’s Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, responding to one women with an explicit complaint:

That’s just Charlie being Charlie.

Vega thought everything was jake.  Guys are guys.  No worries, dearie.  Vega added, claiming to have learned better:

I should have stood up for them. I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.

Yewbetcha.  Now, what is Vega doing with her “regret?”  Besides bodice-ripping and wallowing in it, I mean.

And this, from an unnamed PBS spokeswoman:

PBS was shocked to learn today of these deeply disturbing allegations[.]

We’re shocked—shocked—to learn that inappropriate behavior is going on in this establishment.  Right.

Maybe it’s time that, in addition to holding the miscreants to account, we started firing and, yes, jailing, supervisors and executives who actively condoned, if not outright encouraged, these behaviors through their own conscious decisions to ignore rampant rumors and their deliberate choices to hide their heads in the sand and not investigate—whether to protect the abused employees or to clear the good names of other employees subjected to salacious, but baseless, rumors.

These guys shouldn’t be allowed to hide under their desks in their corner offices anymore.