Category Archives: culture

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.

Protection

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Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.

Blue about Blue Slips?

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For a long time—nearly a century, according to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA)—the Senate had a tradition (not a rule) that Senators from the home State of a judicial nominee had to approve that nominee—send forward a “blue slip” before that nominee could be considered, or even sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The administration of President Donald Trump has tended to disregard that tradition.  In fact, he’s sent seven—according to Feinstein, again—appellate court nominees to the Senate over “the objection of home-state Democrats” and—the horror—gotten them confirmed, including a number to the California-based 9th Circuit.

Feinstein’s latest peeve concerns Ken Lee and Dan Collins, whom Trump has nominated—to the 9th Circuit.  Both Feinstein and her California colleague, Senator Kamala Harris (D) withheld their blue slips for both of these two judges.

Feinstein is pretending to object on the basis of tradition, which itself cynically holds tradition to be inviolate, no matter the circumstances.

Democratic senators have made and continue to make good faith efforts to find consensus picks for the circuit courts.
As Senator Harris and I have made clear, we’ve been willing to work from the start with this president to choose consensus, mainstream nominees to the 9th Circuit….

Except that they have not. These two nominees, along with the other Trump nominees—and confirmations, including to the 9th—are textualists: they hold that the Constitution (and laws) mean what they say; they are not open to reinterpretation according to a judge’s view of the “needs” of society.  It doesn’t get any more mainstream than that. Indeed, any lack of consensus just shows how out of touch with our supreme Law, how out of the mainstream, modern Liberal judges are.

But the fact is, Feinstein and her fellows are not objecting on the basis of tradition.  They’re objecting on the basis of the loss of their ability to dictate who they will permit to be nominated, their ability to avoid open debate on the fitness of a nominee.

We’ve seen, too, the quality of the “faith” with which Feinstein and her fellows have been willing to work from the start with this president on judicial nominees.  These Progressive-Democrats made that clear with their smear campaign on then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The blue slip policy is a tradition the Progressive-Democrats have badly abused to the point of its partisan destruction.

Yet Another Veterans Administration Failure

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Here is another failure of the VA to take care of our veterans as they are charged to do, and as the VA’s motto promises they’ll do.  Here is another casual dishonor of that promise [emphasis added].

More than 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs patients in Kansas didn’t get proper follow-up care after initial colonoscopies last year, a problem that was addressed only after a whistleblower repeatedly reported it, according to a government watchdog.
The watchdog found patients didn’t get follow-up screenings on time and when they did, often didn’t get the results in a timely manner because of [a string of excuses].

Here’s that motto which the VA has so routinely dishonored:

To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan

After all this time, and with VA failure rate continuing unabated, it’s time to get off the dime and get rid of the VA altogether.  As I’ve said many times, commit this Failure Administration’s current and putative future budgets to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need and want from the doctors they choose, the clinics they choose, the hospitals they choose.  It’s time to unshackle our veterans from the VA’s determined resistance to perform.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.