Category Archives: culture

Dithering?

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Or attention-whoring?  This is what Howard Schultz, Presidential candidate agonist, has said about the party of which he says he’s no longer a member:

The Democratic Party has shifted significantly to the left. The Democratic Party left me; I didn’t leave them.

I’ll elide, for this post, the petty cliché of that remark.

Instead, Schultz has been running around the countryside giving interviews, hosting town halls, drawing attention to the possibility that he might, someday, declare his formal candidacy for President as an Independent—or something.

He’s agonizing over whether his running would throw the election to Trump. He’s agonizing over whether he’d draw enough Trump voters to throw the election to the Progressive-Democrat candidate.  He’s agonizing over whether that Party candidate would be too Progressive or Socialist.  He’s agonizing over whether he would have a chance to win.

He’s even raising straw men about the fact that he’d be a Jewish candidate.

I am [would be…] running as an American who happens to be Jewish.

At least he’s got that much right.

On the other hand, Schultz could quit agonizing and shirt-rending and just run.  He could run as a Democrat in the Progressive-Democrat Party and try to draw the Party back toward the center (win or lose, that much would be a valuable service).  He could run as an Independent and make his own case for his value as President (did he actually believe in that value).

Sadly, right now—and possibly for the duration—he’s just acting like a porch dog, yapping from the safety of his front stoop, without any demonstrated interest in actually joining the fray.

A Recognition

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At last, the racism inherent in affirmative action is starting to be recognized.

Civil rights officials at the US Education Department are requiring the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center medical school to cease factoring race into admissions decisions, putting other institutions of higher education on notice that their continued use of affirmative action policies will draw federal scrutiny.

The rest of the Texas Tech University System has already eliminated the use of racist (and sexist) affirmative action policies in its admissions process.

There’ll continue to be resistance, though, in the “academic” community.  Here’s Peter McDonough, Vice President and General Counsel for the American Council on Education

We do worry that a college or university may interpret a report of a resolution…as saying, “If you take race or ethnicity into account, you can be investigated.”

I certainly hope so.  Neither racism nor the bigotry of ethnicity preference—nor sexism—has any place in American society, much less as a selection criterion for anything.

Next up: completing this evolution by formally and explicitly ridding affirmative action of its inherent sexism.

Then, to saucer and blow this travesty, we need the Supreme Court to stop dithering, recognize that ex-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s 20 years are long expired, and eliminate all vestiges of the use of race, or sex, or ethnicity, or any other non-merit-related discriminant from affirmative action programs.

Progressive-Democrat’s Bigotry

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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) has displayed her bigotry again.  This time she’s called Stephen Miller, a senior advisor for President Donald Trump, a white nationalist.

Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.

She also knows that Miller is a Jew.  This is just another of her blatant anti-Semitic bigotry, which now she’s using to smear the President over his immigration policies, because Omar is incapable of forming a coherent argument regarding immigration.

Paraphrasing her own six-year-old daughter: Knock it off. You’re a Congresswoman.

And, because the Progressive-Democratic Party agrees with her behavior, as plainly shown by their refusal to condemn her prior anti-Semitic remarks and House Party members remaining silent on this latest slur, I add this: Knock it off.  You’re a political party.

The fact that Omar still has influence in a political party is an outrage.

Timidity

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Progressive-Democrat Mayor (South Bend, IN) and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg used to insist that, in addition to Black Lives Mattering, Blue Lives and All Lives Matter, also.

Not so much, anymore.

What I did not understand at that time was that that phrase just early, into mid-, especially 2015 was coming to be viewed as a sort of counter slogan to Black Lives Matter….
And so this statement that seems anodyne and something no one could be against actually wound up being used to devalue what the Black Lives Matter movement….

What utter, timid nonsense.

The devaluing was only in the fetid imaginations of those demanding the meanings of words be changed to suit their whims and not be kept in their true meanings.

All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter do not in any way devalue the fact that Black Lives Matter or alter the premise of the Black Lives Matter movement that black lives matter.  Proclaiming the one in no way devalues the other; the two exist easily side by side without contradiction, without dialectic.

Buttigieg’s meek apology for uttering truisms is just his surrender of our lexicon to a narrow, activist move.

The governments of both Russia and the People’s Republic of China are well-known for their doublespeak and their…alteration…of the meanings of words and phrases to suit their political wishes.  Would a President Buttigieg further surrender our lexicon to them and speak using only terms and meanings of which they approve, too?

Is this another example of Progressive-Democrat flexibility to be offered to our enemies?

Releasing the Mueller Report

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The Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in full uproar over the Mueller report—they want it released right damn now, and they want it unredacted. They’re not alone on the first; all of us want the report released as soon as possible.  Which leads to the second: it’s illegal to release grand jury proceedings and classified intelligence information, both of which are present in the report.  The Progressive-Democrats, of course, know this; they just don’t think laws or regulations matter when they become inconvenient.

AG William Barr also agrees with that first part.

Mr Barr has made clear that he appreciates the public interest in seeing as much of Mr Mueller’s report as possible.

Barr should emphasize that appreciation by releasing the (redacted as required) Mueller report to the public a week or more before he releases it to the public’s elected employees in Congress.

Then there’s the House Intelligence Committee MFWIC:

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff recently tweeted that “Barr should seek court approval (just like in Watergate) to allow the release of grand jury material. Redactions are unacceptable.”

How disingenuous. Were Schiff serious, he’d seek court approval—and an associated release order—himself. He’s just cynically posturing.