Category Archives: culture

When the Bad Man Comes

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Forty-nine people were murdered in their house of worship in Christ Church, New Zealand last Friday. The thug

slaughtered worshipers at Al Noor [mosque] in a roughly two-minute rampage within that building. He then left for about two minutes before re-entering the building and firing on people on the ground for a further minute.

Left and came back.  Then he drove five miles across town to another mosque and started in again.

The butcher was active for thirty-six minutes before police arrived—that’s thirty-six minutes from the first call to the police, not from the start of the shooting.

When the bad man comes and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.

Our Progressive-Democrats want to disarm us with their idiotic gun “control” laws.  New Zealand’s gun laws already require a citizen to satisfy the local police in order to get permission to bear any arm at all, and they want to tighten gun laws further.

The nature of this pseudo-logic is succinctly laid out by Rogério Mendonça of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress:

The logic of the left is always the same: if a crazy guy uses guns to kill people, the solution is to take guns away from people who have nothing to do with what happened[.]

This would be criminal were it not so self-evidently insane.

Mendonça then supplied the right answer:

Now imagine if a decent person had been armed at that school [referring to a Brazilian school attack in which eight children were murdered]. They could have stopped the attack from ending in the bloody way it did.

Just as is often done in the US; after all, the first responders are those already at the scene.  However, these successful defenses don’t get the publicity that mass killings in gun free zones get.

A Governor Misrepresents

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New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), has provided another example of the dishonesty of Progressive-Democrats as he continues to whine about his State’s excessive State and local taxes no longer being deductible above a high maximum on Federal income tax forms.

He said Trump intentionally targeted states whose populations oppose him by a majority.

And

You pay your state income tax, they then tax your state income tax payment. First time ever.

No, the first is misleading.  The SALT cap was aimed at capping Federal tax deductions generally in order to level tax requirements, at least a little, across all income levels.  That only a few States have SALT set so high that their rich residents routinely exceed the $10,000 threshold is an outcome of those few States having such excessively high taxes; it has nothing to do with where the deductibility limit is set.

The second is an outright lie.  Only New York, et al., are taxing their citizens’ State income; the Feds are simply not allowing wealthiest to deduct all of their State and local taxes from their Federal income tax bill.  Not allowing a deduction is not the same as taxing.

On the other hand, if there is double taxation; it’s the States applying the second income tax on the same income.  It’s their choice to come in behind the Feds’ income tax and apply a second—their own—income tax to that same income.

The States as double-taxers is demonstrated in two ways. One is the seven States that don’t have—don’t need and don’t want—an income tax on their citizens’ income, with an eighth State kicking its State income tax to the curb as of 2021, and the two that only tax dividends and interest payments.

The other is the number of States whose income tax requirements require submission of the Federal income tax data (not income data) as the basis for the States’ application of their own income tax.

And a double-taxation mitigating factor: most of those States that do apply their second income tax to the Feds’ income tax don’t have their SALT set so high that the payments aren’t fully deductible from the Federal income tax.  Only a few States have their SALT set usuriously high—and that’s the deliberate choice of the men of those States’ governments.

A No-Deal Brexit

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The Wall Street Journal opined earlier this week that, in the words of the piece’s subheadline,

A no-deal crash out of the EU may be the best outcome now.

The rest of the thing was a string of rationalizations of why this is true, but the heart of the matter is that subhead.

In fact, though, a no-deal departure always has been the best outcome.

A priori because that’s what the Brits voted for in their referendum—they wanted their sovereignty and control of their own borders back. Full stop.

In retrospect because Brussels has acted in bad faith, solely to punish the Brits for their effrontery, ever since. EU leadership, lately in the person of Donald Tusk, has acted in echo of Jacques Chirac’s slam on eastern European nations:

It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

There’s no reason at all for the Brits to talk further with the EU regarding the terms of Great Britain’s departure for freedom.

Update: Yesterday, the British Parliament voted against a no-deal Brexit and in favor of going to Brussels and beg for more time to negotiate. What happened to the courage that led Great Britain to build a globe-spanning empire?

Fortunately, Parliament’s move is non-binding. We’ll see whether Prime Minister Theresa May has the courage required to stay with the scheduled date for British departure, currently 29 March.

Special Treatment?

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Or just another sordid example of the Left’s double standard?

Recall the 29 cops, including SWAT members who did the dawn raid on an old man’s home in order to arrest that dangerous criminal Roger Stone.

Compare that with the treatment of a member of the Hollywood elite, Lori Loughlin, who’s accused of bribery and other crimes related to the current college admissions scandal.  She’s being permitted to present herself at a local police station at a time of her convenience pursuant to the allegations.

Loughlin has made arrangements to surrender when she returns to Los Angeles, TMZ, the celebrity news site, reported.

It may be true that Loughlin “working in Vancouver, Canada” at the time arrest warrants went out, but Canadian authorities have shown themselves capable of on-the-spot arrests—like with a Huawei executive.

She has, eventually, found it personally convenient and reported to an FBI station.

Hmm….

De Blasio Raises a Point

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was asked whether he thought Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s remarks were anti-Semitic.

I did.  Let me be really clear, suggesting that support for Israel is beholden to a foreign power is absolutely unacceptable and illogical, too[.]

He went on, adding

as an Italian-American, he does not feel “beholden to my ancestral homeland” as Omar appeared to characterize some Jewish Americans in regard to Israel.

The point makes me wonder: is Omar, in assuming some groups of Americans have conflicting loyalties to America and to their home country, projecting her own allegiance to Somalia, neverminding the treatment she says she got there?