Category Archives: culture

He Said He’s Sorry

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…and that makes it all better.

Doug Hodge, ex-CEO of PIMCO, wrote an apologia­—I won’t call it an apology—for his participation in the Rick Singer-operated college admissions scandal in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

I have to wonder, though, just how sincere Hodge’s missive is, or whether he wrote it as part of his sentence—for how many hours of community service does this piece count? Or did he write it in return for the short jail term he got (nine whole months for a nearly one million of dollars fraud).

And: words of regret for the shame I have brought upon…my children, but not a syllable for the larger damage he’s done them: his statement, by his actions, that he had no confidence in their own abilities; his going-in assumption, demonstrated by those actions, that he considered them just not good enough to get into a good school without cheating.

No, it doesn’t make anything all better.

Disappointing

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) is defending his vote to convict President Donald Trump during the impeachment and trial fiasco of the last several weeks. In the course of that defense, Manchin says he wanted to see more information from Trump and his defenders. In the course of that, he tweeted [emphasis added]:

I’ve read the transcripts thoroughly & listened to the witnesses under oath. Where I come from a person accused defends themselves with witnesses and evidence. Where I come from a person accused defends themselves with witnesses and evidence.

No, Senator Manchin.  Where I come from—the United States of America—a person accused doesn’t have to do that; it’s on the accuser to prove his accusations.

Full stop.

Manchin should know better.

Leave alone, Jobs, Respect

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Ex-Chicago Mayor and ex-President Barack Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (D) cried out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month that Progressive-Democrats are “blowing their chance,” the central theme of which was that the current crop of Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidates seemed to be running against ex-Progressive-Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, rather than the current President, Donald Trump.

A Letter to the Editor writer in Friday’s WSJ took issue with Emanuel’s piece; this part in particular drew my attention.

Donald Trump is on the edge of doing more for black Americans than Mr Emanuel’s party has done for decades. He’s leaving them alone, giving them jobs, showing them respect.

I agree with the letter writer (RTWT), but I do have one small correction here. Giving minorities things is what Progressive-Democrats—like Emanuel—do, in order to keep those minorities trapped in the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage. Trump is creating opportunity and helping black Americans—all minorities—get second chances after sometimes serious mistakes, find their own jobs, be able to make their own way.

And you bet Trump is otherwise leaving them alone. This is wholly unlike the Left, even more generally than its Party, which hektors, when not outright smearing, blacks for not adhering to Party, not voting correctly, and thereby being good blacks.

Opportunity, actual help rather than giving things, no soft bigotry of low expectations—that’s true respect.

There was this, also, from Emanuel in his missive:

The next nine months will present our raucous coalition a rare opportunity to establish a new Democratic “metropolitan majority” that could last for years.

This is very illuminating. It makes explicit the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for tens of millions of Americans—those of us citizens who live in flyover country.

Upset

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Republicans have run a video montage that pairs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) SOTU speech rip-up with individual quotes from President Donald Trump’s speech.  The Progressive-Democrats have their panties thoroughly twisted over that. Here’s the offending video.

Here’s Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff with a canonical example of the angst:

The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests[.]

“These platforms” are Twitter and Facebook, where the ridicule is posted.

With this plaint—and these folks really are serious—Progressive-Democrats once again display their utter contempt for average Americans. With this Pelosi speech-tearing video, they’re saying average Americans are just too grindingly stupid to recognize satire, ridicule, campaign rhetoric when we see it.

These are the thin-skinned ones, or the So-Much-Smarter ones, who want to run our nation. These are the easily triggered ones who want to face Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping.  Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson.

Wow.

A Party Platform

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Kimberly Strassel had an interesting column (when has she ever not?) in her Thursday Wall Street Journal, centered on the divisions within the Progressive-Democratic Party. What especially drew my attention, though, was the question with which she closed her piece.

Does the common Democratic desire to beat Mr Trump overcome all that [all those venues of division]?

The very existence of the question illuminates another Progressive-Democratic Party problem: it has no serious policy on which to run (another attempt to take over the private economy—Medicare for All? Really?); all it has is a platform of “Beat Trump.” Shouting about beating an opponent rather than proposing new, restorative policies or touting existing, successful policies is, I suggest, no path to gaining a position from which to expand on existing, successful policies or enact new, restorative policies.

And: what will Party do for an encore in 2024?