Monthly Archives: June 2018

An Ego Move

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…by a flake.  Senator Jeff Flake (D R, AZ) says he’s going to block any and all judicial nominees until he gets his way.

Myself and a number of senators, at least a few of us, will stand up and say let’s not move any more judges until we get a vote, for example, on tariffs[.]

This is just another ego move by a flake Senator.  Were Jeff Flake serious about this, he would have moved before he rendered himself a lame duck Senator; there were plenty of questions on which he could have done this sort of thing besides tariffs.  He chose to wait, though, until there would be no consequences for his ego trip.

Now he’s ready to destroy the judiciary, to let it get populated by a later administration with activist judges and Justices for whom the law and the Constitution are mere suggestions, to be disregarded when they become inconvenient to those activists’ personal agendas.

“Freedom”

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Here is the freedom the Progressive-Democratic Party and its Leftist supporters will allow.

The Association of Library Service to Children‘s (ALSC) board voted unanimously on Saturday to rename the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” as the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award.”

Why?  Because her books depicted the stereotypes of a bygone age, and so she must be purged.  This is on a par with “liberal” schools purging books by “old, dead, white guys” from their literature curriculum, as though those thoughts, ideas, philosophies had no impact on the evolution of Western Civilization.

We have the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling Conservatives variously as terrorists or Nazis.  We have Facebook and Twitter censoring conservative news reports and accounts, all in the name of blocking “fake” news.

 

Then there’s the Progressive-Democrat Congressmen.

Recall the intern who yelled “Mr. President, f— you!” across the Capitol Rotunda.  She works—still—for Senator Maggie Hassan (D, NH).  The intern was suspended, but Hassan has kept her on Hassan’s payroll.

There’s House’s Hispanic Caucus heckling President Donald Trump in the Capital Building, disrupting his activities.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) has called for anyone working in the Executive Branch to be harassed wherever they go—restaurants, gas stations, department stores, she named it.  And not just protest: harass and drive, physically, from the public square.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress actively oppose any sort of immigration reform—especially including securing our borders—in large part because they oppose anything Republican, but in equally large part because they don’t want the US to have secure borders; they don’t believe we Americans should be able to determine for ourselves who we let in and under what circumstances.  Never mind that this includes violent criminals, drug purveyors, terrorists.  It’s true that these are a small minority of those who want to enter the US, but the damage these persons do to our communities can be catastrophic.  Those Congressmen don’t seem to care, though, so deeply imbedded are they in their open borders ideology.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) even has said in so many words

The only way we’re going to work with him [Trump] is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues[.]

 

Violence is well within the Progressive-Democrats’ and their Leftist supporters’ tool kit.

We have the Left driving a White House Press Secretary and her family from a restaurant, with the restaurant owner’s enthusiastic assistance.  We have Left thugs physically confronting the Florida Attorney General and her family at a movie theater.  We have Left thugs driving the DHS Secretary and her family from a restaurant.  These thugs also “gathered” at her home to continue the assault.

Keep in mind Waters’ call.

We have BLM assaulting speakers and preventing them from speaking.  We have Antifa thugs attacking conservative rallies.  We have Left thugs bringing flamethrowers to a far right rally.

And a Leftist murderer wannabe shot up a Republican baseball practice, wounding several and nearly killing House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.

 

We have the Left publishing the (stolen) personal contact information—including home addresses—of the men and women of ICE and their families with “encouragement” to go to those homes and harass the agents and their families.

Hollywood especially enjoys attacking the women of the Trump administration.

Chelsea Handler called Sarah [Sanders, WH Press Secretary] a “harlot” and “trollop” on her show.

And

Jimmy Kimmel mocked her [Melania Trump’s] accent

And Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c___.”

And Peter Fonda called via his Twitter account to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”

 

The NLMSM is in on the act, too.

Jennifer Rubin wrote that it is “both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners” of Trump’s immigration policy.

And there’s Ali Watkins, late of The New York Times, who had affairs with two of her…sources…in order to get “leaks” of anti-Trump information.  It’s true enough that Watkins is no longer with the NYT, but only because she got caught.  The NYT turned blind eye to her escapades for as long as they could.

 

This is what we can look forward to if the Progressive-Democrats gain control of the House or Senate, much less if they gain control of both.  Not only will we be free to speak only what the Progressive-Democrats permit us to speak, to read only what the Progressive-Democrats will permit us to read, to worship only within the parameters permitted by the Progressive-Democrats, they will violently suppress any effort to do otherwise.

Make no mistake, either: this will come to pass if we sit on our hands come voting time this fall.

Ransomware and Government Entities

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The Wall Street Journal, in an article about ransomware being used to hack city (and other) computer systems, asked the question Should Cities Pay?

Not only no, cities (and others) should not pay, but no2.

Aside from paying the ransom being an act of cowardice, it aids and abets the criminals—which is amoral, if not yet a felony.

Sure, it costs more in the moment to refuse and rebuild, but what costs are saved by not telling the hacker world that the city will gladly pay the ransom and so be hacked repeatedly?  What’s the cost to other, similarly situated, cities and towns (and public libraries) when one gladly aids and abets?

What’s the excuse, today, with ransomware so well known, for cities not hardening their systems against this hack (and other hacks) before the hack occurs?

Protecting US Technology

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The Trump administration is moving toward a set of rules that would heavily restrict the People’s Republic of China’s ability to acquire American technology-developing companies and American technology.

Of course, there are objections to protecting our stuff.

Industry groups…are mainly concerned that the export controls could negatively affect their businesses by preventing them from using their technological edge.

If such groups were truly serious about this, they’d be truly serious about hardening their member companies’ facilities against hacking.

And

While many object to the investment restrictions, they are seen as having less practical impact because Chinese investment has fallen off so drastically.

This is short-sighted to the point of being disingenuously so.  The PRC’s investment has fallen off because, through theft, hacking, and their extortionate requirement of “sharing” technology and inserting backdoors into core software as a condition of doing business in the PRC, they’ve largely caught up.  When we get our edge back, the PRC’s “investment” efforts will pick back up.  The restriction objectors know this.

Bad Bonds?

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Recall that Michigan State University agreed to pay $500 million to victims and associates of Larry Nassar’s sex abuse victims while he was pretending to treat our women gymnasts’ injuries.

Now the school intends to float bonds to raise the money to pay the bill.

Were I an investment advisor—which I’m not, nor do I play one on the radio—I’d advise against buying these bonds; I’m not satisfied Michigan State will be able to pay them off in the end, even with OPM.

Aside from their investment quality, or lack, I also think it’s immoral to bail out the school until there has been a serious cleaning house of school management, from middle management layers all the way up through the top layer.  This house-cleaning must include the athletic department as well as HR, student affairs, extracurricular affairs, and the President’s office.  Especially in the latter and in the athletic department, no one should be left but the secretaries.

And none of this gets to the fact that the bond offering is just a cynical back-door effort to get taxpayers to pay for the school’s failure.  That’s also morally unacceptable.

And this:

[The school] is in talks with its insurers and has said it expects to recover at least some funds through them.

Is the school seriously suggesting that it bought insurance against the risk that its medical personnel would engage in sexual abuse?  I can think of no other way in which insurers would be liable for a payout here.