Category Archives: culture

Wages of Bigotry?

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It seems that some Americans are waking up to the institutional bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party, an awakening triggered by the blatant disregard for Party antisemitism that House Progressive-Democrats proudly displayed in their refusal last month to censure Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over her anti-Semitic statements.  In that instance, Party chose, instead, to pass a heavily diluted resolution “disapproving” of bigotry in “all its forms,” but refusing to name the names of bigots in its own house.  Some Americans with Jewish heritage and religion are speaking up with dismay.

Mark Schwartz (D) Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ:

We felt we had a home there [in the Party].  And now we feel like we have to check our passports.

Jordan Manor, a “gay Jewish Israeli-American” of Manhattan:

 The party I thought cared about me seems to disregard me when it comes to my Jewish identity.

Mark Dunec, Livingston, NJ, consultant and 2014 Progressive-Democratic candidate for Congress:

I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family.  I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

A teacher in Queens has rejected Omar’s—and by extension, Pelosi’s—defense that Omar just didn’t know any better.

The fake defense she doesn’t know what she’s saying? I don’t believe it.  This is a grown woman and a member of Congress. Trying to excuse this as naivete is inexcusable.

It isn’t just anger, either; many are acting.  The Queens teacher has quit Party and now is registered as an Independent.  Allison Gangi of Manhattan, too:

The watered-down resolution triggered my decision to walk away from the Democratic Party.

That Teaneck Deputy Mayor?

Our only question now is, do we start voting Republican, or do we become Republicans?

And others, like this one, see the danger explicitly:

I’m homeless. I don’t think I can vote for Trump, even though he’s great for Israel.  But as a Jew, I can’t see a way to support the Democratic Party. It’s supporting your own destruction.

Alphabet Objects

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Alphabet, through its Google subordinate, objects to the White House’s and JCS’ characterization of it as aiding our enemy, the People’s Republic of China.

An anonymous (perhaps because he’s speaking without Google management’s permission, perhaps because he, or that management, is embarrassed by his claims) Google spokesperson said

We are not working with the Chinese military. We are working with the US government, including the Department of Defense, in many areas including cybersecurity, recruiting and healthcare.

Yet Alphabet has withdrawn Google from working with our defense establishment on drone or artificial intelligence technologies that could be used for active defense of our nation.

On the other hand, Alphabet has engaged Google with the People’s Republic of China for work supporting PRC government censorship via a censored and censorable version of a search engine for use in the PRC.  Alphabet has engaged Google with the PRC for work on aspects of AI—ostensibly for that censorable search engine—that can be used by the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army for its own defensive and offensive operations.

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.