Category Archives: culture

Inadequate

Posted on by
Reply

Co-President Joe Biden-Kamala Harris are having trouble getting much of their political and (pseudo-)economic agenda passed. (Aside: failure isn’t a done deal; it would behoove the pundits on the right side of center to stop their crowing and predictions of landslide Republican elections in November.)

That’s not a failure of the agenda or of Biden-Harris or of Party managers in the House and Senate, though.

Not at all, insisted Paul Begala.

I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers, okay?

And

This is a preview of Inadequate. Read the full post (314 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

No Law

Posted on by
Reply

…but merely convenience. Australia’s immigration ministry makes Australia a nation ruled by men and not by law.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke made clear in court documents concerning his second revocation of Novak Djokovic’s entry visa that the law counts for nothing.

Hawke didn’t dispute Djokovic’s claim of a medical exemption from rules that travelers to Australia must be vaccinated against Covid-19…. Hawke, who canceled Djokovic’s visa on Friday, said allowing the player to stay could sway some Australians against getting vaccinated.

Additionally,

Hawke didn’t refute Djokovic’s contention that he posed a negligible health risk, documents showed.

This is a preview of No Law. Read the full post (364 words, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

The Senate and the Republic

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Jeff Merkley (D, OR) has said the quiet part aloud (to coin a phrase). His immediate venue is the coming Progressive-Democrat effort to Federalize our nation’s elections, which by our Constitution are set by each State’s own legislatures and only modifiable under narrow circumstances by the Federal Congress.

You can think of January as a moment when two different forces are converging. One is the functionality of the Senate and the other is the functionality of our republic.

This is a preview of The Senate and the Republic. Read the full post (318 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

Child Abuse

Posted on by
2

Now the New Orleans government is requiring children as young as five years old to get vaccinated, whether they need it or not, whether their parents want it for their children or not.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she is implementing the policy “to keep the omicron variant at bay,” amid surging cases in Orleans Parish.

And

“The vaccine mandate will expand to include children ages 5-11,” she said. “We will require proof of vaccination or negative tests at bars and restaurants and other locations for everyone ages 5 and older.”

This is a preview of Child Abuse. Read the full post (417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Censorship in New York State

Posted on by
Reply

Now the wonders of the New York State Senate want to ban, formally by statute, speech of which they disapprove.

A New York Senate bill if passed would criminalize the promotion of content that “includes a false statement of fact or fraudulent medical theory that is likely to endanger the safety or health of the public.”

This is rank censorship. Whose definition of “likely?” Whose definition of “fraudulent theory?”

Here are just a few items that are threatened by this censorship:

  • Advertising
  • Political ads/speech
  • Satire
  • Comedy
  • Ridicule
  • Exaggeration for effect
  • Irony
This is a preview of Censorship in New York State. Read the full post (179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Training for the New Corporate World

Posted on by
Reply

A new cottage industry (here, the cottages are mansions) is springing up.

US companies are turning to programs aimed at preparing women and people of color for corporate board roles in a bid to comply with calls from regulators and investors to diversify their directors.
Law firms, universities, and current directors of companies have launched new or expanded programs over the past few years to coach prospective board candidates, offering training on topics from corporate governance to committee work. Some programs are free or sponsored by companies, while others can cost thousands of dollars.
Sponsors are hoping to broaden the pool of people who are ready to fill board roles….

This is a preview of Training for the New Corporate World. Read the full post (238 words, estimated 57 secs reading time)

Woke DoJ

Posted on by
Reply

A Portland ANTIFA…person…has had all Federal criminal charges dismissed, with prejudice, after doing a whole 30 hours of “community service.”

Eva Warner of Beaverton, Oregon, who police said was also known as Joshua Warner, was charged in September 2020 with felony civil disorder.

Her deeds, during the Portland Summer of Riots:

Portland Police said Warner directed a high-powered laser into the eyes of law enforcement officers trying to disperse the crowd. Warner resisted arrest, prompting officers to use force, the DOJ said. A laser pointer was found on Warner.
…
About a week later, Warner was arrested again and charged with second-degree criminal mischief in connection with another riot.
…
A week after that, Warner was arrested a third time in connection with yet another riot and charged with interfering with a peace officer and second-degree disorderly conduct.

This is a preview of Woke DoJ. Read the full post (299 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

A Poll

Posted on by
Reply

And a cynically timed one, at that. FiveThirtyEight ran a poll against the backdrop of a potential Supreme Court ruling regarding abortion, asking for abortion stories from women who’d had them.

And they ran that poll on Christmas Day, a day when hundreds of millions of Americans, and billions of Christians globally, celebrate the birth—not the abortion—of a child.

Aside from that tone-deaf, if not cynical, timing, the crowd also didn’t get the answers for which it was looking, even though it equally cynically distorted the subject altogether.

This is a preview of A Poll. Read the full post (284 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

What She Said

Posted on by
Reply

Cynthia Millen, the erstwhile USA Swimming official who resigned over the NCAA’s and UPenn’s decision to let transgender swimmer Lia Thomas compete in women’s swimming meets, had some further thoughts on the larger matter.

The fact is that swimming is a sport in which bodies compete against bodies. Identities do not compete against identities[.]

And

The statement for women then is you do not matter, what you do is not important, and little girls are going to be thrown under the bus by all of this[.]

And

…boys will always have larger lung capacity, larger hearts, greater circulation, a bigger skeleton, and less fat.

This is a preview of What She Said. Read the full post (256 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

“Ethical Dilemma”

Posted on by
Reply

Walmart is getting blowback from the citizens and government personnel of the People’s Republic of China in response to the company’s apparent decision to stop selling products—in accordance with US law—sourced from or with components sourced from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC, where the men of the PRC government are practicing genocide and using the so-far survivors for slave labor.

In her Wall Street Journal article on the matter and the blowback other US companies also are getting for following US law, Liza Lin had this remark, which illustrates the far-too-wide misunderstanding of the situation that too many journalists have.

This is a preview of “Ethical Dilemma”. Read the full post (268 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)