Category Archives: culture

Maybe It’s Time

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Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston had this on the importance of “diversity and inclusion” relative to combat capability:

Diversity is a number—do you have people that don’t look or think like you in the room? Inclusion is listening and valuing those people[.]

Our army’s Training and Doctrine Command, via its official twitter account had this:

Inclusion & Diversity is what makes our [U.S. Army] better.

No. What makes our army—our military establishment in general—is whether we have soldiers and formations of soldiers who are capable, in defense of our nation and when called of our friends and allies, of successfully engaging, pursuing, and killing our enemies’ soldiers, our enemies’ formations, our enemies’ capability of mounting further attacks.

That’s also who we should see “in the room.” And no one else. Diversity will fall out of that, if we do a proper job of training for combat, rather than for political correctness. Every combat or combat support training graduate will be included—and that’s the inclusiveness that we need.

Our current military management’s (we seem to have a serious lack of leadership) emphasis on “diversity and inclusion” for their own sake, as epitomized by Grinston, is divisive, it’s stinking racism and sexism.

Grinston had the…political correctness…to make his claim against the backdrop of the travesty exploding in Afghanistan. About that contrast, Marine veteran Jessie Jane Duff is on the right track [emphasis hers].

This is what matters: 11 Marines and one Navy Corpsman killed. Americans.
I’m positive they didn’t look or think like you, Sergeant Major. Every flag drapped coffin looks the same.
We have an #AfghanistanCrisis and this is your tweet. Shameful.

Maybe it’s time to clear out the foolish and the idiotic who choose not to understand what it takes to have an effective military. Maybe it’s time to discharge or retire our military managers, from the Secretary of Defense and JCS Chief on down through most of the flag and GS equivalents in the Pentagon.

An Example

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…of what an honorable government does. This is the Republic of Korea.

From Laura Bicker, @BBCLBicker, via Lyman Stone @lymanstoneky:

@BBCLBicker
380 Afghans who worked for the Korean government in Afghanistan will arrive in South Korea tomorrow according to MOFA [Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. They will not be entering as refugees, but as people of merit to the country says the Foreign Ministry.
9:20 PM · Aug 24, 2021

@BBCLBicker
The 380 are currently at Kabul Airport and will arrive in Incheon tomorrow by military plane. These are Afghans who have worked for years at the Embassy, KOICA, Bagram Korean Hospital, Bagram Korean Vocational Training centre, Chairkar Korean Provincial Reconstruction Team.

@BBCLBicker
The Afghan staff and families will go through the quarantine process as soon as they arrive in Incheon Airport and will then be moved to government owned temporary housing. All notes from MOFA briefing monitored by @HosuLakeLee

Unfortunately—dangerously—we have the Biden/Harris administration instead.

Two Congressmen Went on a Trip

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Congressmen Seth Moulton (D, MA) and Peter Meijer (R, MI) went to Kabul, Afghanistan to see for themselves the situation there. They didn’t want to rely solely on President Joe Biden’s (D) word, or those of SecDef Lloyd Austin or JCS Chairman General Mark Milley. Even worse, they didn’t say, “Mother, may I” before heading off.

What’s really bad, though, is that Biden, et al., weren’t interested in what Moulton and Meijer learned on their trip—it was the fact of the trip itself and that the travelers bypassed the Wonders of the Potomac in the going. In fact, the Biden/Harris administration quite angry about the Congressmen’s impudence.

Biden administration officials were furious about the trip, claiming that the arrival of the men caused a distraction for the personnel on the ground attempting to do a job amid chaos. One senior official told the Washington Post, “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans—while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk—so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”

This isn’t just disingenuous, it’s utterly dishonest. No seats were taken away from at-risk Afghans, not when Biden has abandoned them completely in his panic to get our military out of Afghanistan by the end of the month, on Taliban orders.

Even worse is that lack of interest in what the two observed:

leaving on a passenger flight [but only if that ride had three empty seats] and being taken to an area where evacuees are being temporarily relocated will provide them with on-the-ground knowledge of what the rescue process looks like, and aid their ability to deliver oversight.

Biden, et al., already know all the answers; they have no interest in facts.

Somebody’s Racism in Action

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Progressive-Democrats; their communications organ, the Press; and the Left generally accuse former President Donald Trump of racism. They hardly pass up a chance to make the accusation, even today.

A just completed Federal Reserve analysis of the just completed Federal census and a Brookings Institute (no right-leaning organization that) say otherwise.

While income inequality exists among racial and ethnic groups, the Brookings Institute points out in several reports that black and Hispanic households have made statistically significant economic progress especially in the years prior to pandemic-related shutdowns in 2020.
An analysis by the Federal Reserve, for instance, found wealth for African Americans and Hispanic Americans grew far faster during the Trump years than for whites.
Between 2016 and 2019, median wealth rose for all race and ethnicity groups, the Fed report states, but growth rates during this period “were faster for Black and Hispanic families.” Wealth increased for Black families by 33% and for Hispanic families by 65% during this period, compared to white families, whose wealth only increased by 3%.

And

[The minority] poverty rate reached record lows in 2019, according to Census data. The Black poverty rate of 18.8% was the lowest it has been since 1959 when poverty estimates were first recorded for this group.
In 2019, the poverty rate for Hispanics, 15.7%, was also the lowest on record since data for this group was first recorded in 1972. The poverty rate for Asians was also the lowest on record of 7.3%. The poverty rate of 7.3% for non-Hispanic Whites in 2019 was the same as the poverty rate of 7.3% in 1973.

It’s not just relative wealth, either. The economic upward mobility that Americans used to enjoy, and then lost in recent years, was greatly improved, also.

…84% of the middle class in 1979 was white, 2% was Black, 2% Hispanic, and 2% “other.”
By 2019, whites had fallen to 59% of the middle class, while 12% was Black, 18% was Hispanic, and 10% was listed as “other.”

The list goes on in the JtN article.

If Trump was being racist, he sucked at it, achieving precisely the opposite for minorities.

No, the racism in action is that of the Progressive-Democrats; their communications organ, the Press; and the Left generally with their routine manufacture of a race beef where they knew, and know today, full well none exists.

A California Judge Has Spoken

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Recall California Proposition 22, which exempted Uber Technologies Inc, Lyft Inc, and DoorDash Inc from a California state gig law that, in essence, requires businesses to reclassify their gig associates from independent contractors to employees. That proposition was passed overwhelmingly by the citizens of California.

A California state judge ruled last Friday that the proposition was unconstitutional and so unenforceable. His rationale:

Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch said in Friday’s ruling that Proposition 22 limits the state legislature’s authority and its ability to pass future legislation, which is unconstitutional.

The judge has ruled that the people are not allowed to limit the authority of their employee, of their government. Keep in mind that, although Roesch couched his ruling in terms of the State’s legislative branch, his own judiciary branch is a part of that government whose authority he’s protecting.

The California government (including Roesch, et al., mind you) is not subordinate to the citizens of California?

Here’s the preamble to the California State constitution, which according to Roesch has no meaning.

We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.

It used to be the People of California’s constitution, not the State judiciary’s.

Here’s Art II, Sect 1:

All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.

Here’s Art II, Sect 10(a):

An initiative statute or referendum approved by a majority of votes thereon takes effect the day after the election unless the measure provides otherwise. If a referendum petition is filed against a part of a statute the remainder shall not be delayed from going into effect.

Unless a member of the State’s government, here a judge, demurs. Then the people’s decision is set aside. Because the People are no longer sovereign in California.

Hmm….