Tag Archives: morality

In Which VP Harris Has It Right

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Just not in the way she means. Following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges in the Kenosha riot shooting case, the Kamala Harris (D) half of the Biden-Harris Presidency said this:

The verdict really speaks for itself[.]
As many of you know, I’ve spent the majority of my career working to make the criminal justice system more equitable, and clearly there’s a lot more to do[.]

She’s right, of course. The shootings wanted, as a matter of course, a careful and thorough investigation. Either that was not done—a lot more to do in our justice system—or the prosecutors ignored the results of a careful and thorough investigation and brought the case to trial, anyway—a lot more work to do in our justice system.

As the evidence brought to trial clearly showed, Rittenhouse was there in the middle of the riot to render first aid to those injured by the rioters; to fight fires set by the rioters; and to protect a business, at the behest of the business’ operators, from rioters bent on its physical destruction. As the evidence just as clearly showed, Rittenhouse was hounded, stalked, threatened with murder, chased, attacked, and threatened with a firearm aimed at him by his attackers. Ultimately, he was forced to defend himself, and sadly, lethally so regarding two of his attackers.

Yet the prosecutors brought their charges to trial anyway. And in the course of their presentation, they attacked Rittenhouse for daring to not speak publicly before the trial, to not answer their charges before the trial. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors attempted to enter evidence that had been barred from entry by the judge. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense until after the evidence presentation portion of the trial was closed and closing arguments begun.

The verdict really does speak for itself.

There really is a lot more work to do to make our criminal justice system more equitable.

“Sexism and Racism”

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That’s what’s behind the recent criticism of the Kamala Harris half of the Biden-Harris Presidency, according to the Joe Biden (D) half of the Presidency.

I do think that it has been easier and harsher from some in the right wing who have gone after her because she is the first woman, the first woman of color. I’m not suggesting anyone will acknowledge that publicly[.]

That’s what Biden said with the voice of his Press Secretary Jen Psaki as the latter uttered the words at Politico‘s Wednesday podcast, Women Rule.

He went on, still using Psaki’s voice, as cited by Fox News:

Harris bears a heavy burden being the “first African American, woman of color, Indian American woman to serve in this job[.]”

Of course, it couldn’t be that Harris was selected by Biden explicitly and primarily because she is a woman and black; her actual qualifications not being very high at all on his list of selection criteria. (There was one other criterion that Biden ranked higher than actual qualification: the degree to which she was sympatico with him.)

Far from being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, the racism and sexism here begins with Joe Biden and his explicitly sexist and racist selection criteria, and it extends to the Progressive-Democratic Party and the Left at large for their continued emphasis on Harris’ color and gender rather than on her abilities, talents, and actual performance.

What Is It About the Press Industry…

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Even a press critic cannot avoid injecting moral equivalency sewage into her criticism.

Bari Weiss wrote what could have been a very good dismantling of her industry’s intrinsically dishonest portrayal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the events surrounding him that led to his being put on trial. She had this, in the main, for her piece:

To admit that the press, in the main, got just about every key fact in the Rittenhouse case wrong—that he crossed state lines with a gun, that he had the gun illegally, that he had no connection to Kenosha, that he was connected to white supremacist groups—has nothing to do with whether Kyle Rittenhouse should have gone to Kenosha that day. It has nothing to do with where one stands on the question of open carry….

But then she ruined the entire piece with this moral equivalency:

Or whether or not a teenager should be allowed to walk around with a semiautomatic rifle. No teenager should have been walking around the chaos in Kenosha with a semiautomatic rifle that night.

Why not? Based on what journalistic holier-than-thou requirement is that?

One salient fact Weiss carefully chose to ignore was that, as a 17-year-old, Rittenhouse was legally barred from possessing a handgun, but he could possess a rifle.

Another salient fact that Weiss carefully chose to ignore was that Rittenhouse’s purpose in “walking around the chaos” was to render first aid to people injured in the riot that Weiss hides behind her euphemism and, at the request of some of the folks there, to protect one of the businesses under threat from that riot.

Does Weiss expect anyone to enter that riot wholly unarmed and incapable of defending himself, much less those injured he’s trying to treat, or the business he was asked to protect?

Or does she expect no one to go into an area from which—as she acknowledged—the police had been withdrawn by the decision of a cynical city government to abandon its own responsibilities and allow the rioters to wreak their havoc?

Does she believe that no citizen has a duty to his community and his fellows in that community, especially when its government has abandoned it—that duty always is someone else’s, some other entity’s, to satisfy? Who might that other be, who might that entity be, when government has run away?

And so, here we are: Weiss can’t bear to criticize her industry’s assault without also criticizing her industry’s target.

…that gets people who join it to subordinate their integrity, their morality, to their telling of a story?

Truth and Courage

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On the matter of woke culture and canceling, The Wall Street Journal editors wrote about McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski’s private text to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot following her visit to the McDonald’s restaurant that was the scene of the murder of a 7-year-old child. That text was, in pertinent part,

p.s. tragic shootings in last week, both at our restaurant yesterday and with Adam Toldeo [sic]. With both, the parents failed those kids which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix[.]

The mob howled and Kempczinski went directly to his knees and begged forgiveness.

The Editors had this about the matter, and they’re right as far as they went.

It’s a sign of our destructive times that saying in a private text that adults have some responsibility for the fate of their children is unacceptable.

But that’s far from all of the matter. It’s also a sign of our destructive times that American CEOs like Chris Kempczinski are such abject cowards and beg to apologize for having spoken uncomfortable truths.

We don’t have a Canadian-style truth code, but with company pseudo-leaders like Kempczinski, we don’t need one.

A Taliban Threat

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The Taliban gang ruling over Afghanistan’s territory is saying, “Give us the money, or….”

Taliban officials are warning—or threatening—that unless Western governments and financial institutions release frozen foreign reserves and aid funds, the West could be flooded with a tide of Afghan migrants.

The vast majority of the frozen funds, some $9.5 billion, is held by the Biden-Harris administration’s Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also is withholding direct aid and drawing rights.

Did I say “threat?” Continuing the freeze sounds like a better evacuation plan than the one Biden-Harris used a couple months ago.