Category Archives: morality

All Lives Don’t Matter

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Certainly not in Colorado.

[Governor Jaried, (D)] Polis signed HB 22-1279, the “Reproductive Health Equity Act,” which the governor said “codifies a person’s fundamental right to make reproductive health-care decisions free from government interference.”

And this:

A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of this state[.]

Baby’s lives don’t matter; the State and anyone residing in it are free to murder unborn babies, and those babies don’t even get a voice to speak for them in court. This pretty much says it all regarding Colorado’s Polis (D) and the State’s Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled legislature.

But not quite. There’s this, too, in this…law:

The law prohibits state and local public entities from denying, restricting, interfering with, or discriminating against a person’s right to…have an abortion. It also bars public entities from restricting abortion due to the individual’s “potential, actual, or perceived impact on the pregnancy, the pregnancy’s outcomes, or the pregnant individual’s health.”

The persons being called upon to execute the abortion, whether private or public, are barred from refusing to do so due to that person’s religious beliefs. This Progressive-Democrat move also is a naked assault on religion and on simple conscience.

Will It Be The End?

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Major portions of the press are convinced that a Republican sweep in the coming mid-term elections would spell the end for our nation. A recent Fox News headline reads,

CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and more worry about bloodbath for the Democrats in midterms: “The end of our country”

To which I say, if by “our” they mean CNN‘s, MSNBC‘s, NBC‘s, et al.‘s version of the country, I certainly hope so.

Those…outlets…support in the most vociferous way the racism and sexism of identity politics and Big Government’s utter contempt for us average Americans. They do not share even their Progressive movement founder Theodore Roosevelt’s insistence on an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. They do not support a nation in which equal opportunity exists, where all of us—each of us—are equal under law and before God. They demand equality of outcome, which cancels (to coin a term) any ability each man to show [his] best.

They demand that only (Progressive-)Democrats must be elected.

The Barbarian on His Redeployment

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is redeploying some of his forces away from the vicinity of Kyiv. He’s also ordering his hordes to lay booby traps that would do Daesh proud.  Per Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (as cited by The Wall Street Journal):

[R]etreating Russian forces had placed mines in houses, laid trip wires and booby-trapped corpses.

And this:

The [Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv] city council said a confectionery factory in Bucha had been mined by the Russian military before it departed.

Never mind the lack of military importance of this sort of installation. Certainly, sugar can be used to make a variety of bombs, but to the extent that’s the case, the militarily appropriate act would have been simply to destroy the factory. This was done solely to inflict more civilian casualties.

And at a private residence in Velyka Dymerka, a village just northeast of Kyiv, a returning resident filmed the damage done by Russians:

In a kennel outside, his dog lay dead, apparently shot. “Why would you kill it?”

Because barbarism.

The Progressive-Democratic Party Fails Again

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editors are concerned about the Left’s and the Progressive-Democrats in Congress’ efforts to cancel in one form or another Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over some text messages his wife sent.

Democrats and their media allies quickly sped past Ginni to demand that Justice Thomas resign (Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY)), or be impeached (Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN)), or at least recuse himself from hearing cases related to elections (Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN), et al.).

The Editors are entirely justified in that concern.

However, I think the problem goes well beyond that.  This whole sorry affair is typical of the Left’s and the Progressive-Democratic Party’s intrinsic sexist bigotry, and their efforts to turn back the clock on the feminist movement (the real one of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, et al., not today’s movement of professional victimhood and identity politics).

Demanding Justice Thomas recuse/resign/be impeached over his wife’s remarks does nothing but reduce Mrs Thomas to that erstwhile status of a wife being merely an appendage of her husband and not a free agent in her own right.

Asset Seizures and Doing Business in Russia

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And the disingenuosity of corporate heads who are continuing to do business inside Russia.

Nestlé is still doing business there.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal tweeted that he had talked with Nestlé Chief Executive Mark Schneider, who he said showed no understanding of the side effect of continuing to sell in Russia.

Shmyhal is being generous. Schneider, having risen to the top of a large international corporation, knows full well the fungibility of money; he knows full well that money his company spends in Russia, even if it’s solely to support his employees there and the employees of Russian suppliers of his businesses there, allows other moneys to be reallocated to Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Schneider knows full well that the taxes his Russian-domiciled companies pay go to supporting the Russian war machine.

Other businesses have said they are staying because their hands are tied by joint-venture or franchise agreements.

This is…mistaken. The disruptions caused by war are a perfectly legitimate business—and legal—reason to walk away from “joint ventures,” especially when one of the partners is domiciled in the war-starting nation and thereby (however unavoidably) supporting that war of aggression. These business’ managers know this full well; they’re simply hiding behind a transparent fig leaf in order to put their incomes ahead of what’s right.

Russian prosecutors have warned some companies of asset seizures if they withdraw from the country and threatened to arrest employees.

This is simply idiotic. By surrendering their companies to such threats, the business managers who so succumb already have surrendered their company assets to Russian authorities. Koch Industries COO, Dave Robertson, for instance:

We will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them[.]

He already has, and they already are—whatever Koch’s facilities produce in Russia, those facilities now are producing only that which the Russian government permits.

PepsiCo, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, these are another small part of the extensive list of Western companies finding excuses to continue doing business inside Russia and thereby, however indirectly, supporting that nation’s barbaric war.

Maybe Western consumers should begin looking to other companies from which to buy things.

Update: Since I wrote this, Nestlé has agreed to limit its production in Russia to truly necessary items: baby food and other infant nutrition products, specialist veterinary meals and medical-nutrition products. Nestlé also has committed to donating such profits as it gets in Russia would be donated to humanitarian relief organizations.