Category Archives: culture

Offensive

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Three dentists in North Carolina dressed up in traditional clothing of an American Indian, a Japanese, and a Scot in order to run an advertisement under the catchphrase “Everyone smiles in the same language!”

Oh, the hoo-raw.  SJWs crawled out through their baseboard holes on this one, proclaiming the ad to be “ignorant and offensive” and racist.

No.  What’s ignorant and offensive is the naked racism of manufacturing a beef where there is none for the sole purpose of supporting the professional victim industry.

Felons and Voting

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In general, felons have no voting rights—it’s part of their punishment for having committed their crimes.  There also are growing movements to restore voting rights to felons—they are, after all, US citizens.  (I’m eliding here felons who aren’t citizens; they have no voting rights to restore.)

It’s a debate worth having, but a couple of misunderstandings need to be cleared up first.  These misunderstandings are illustrated in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

As the midterm elections draw closer, Dameon Stackhouse is eager to cast a ballot, but he can’t under New Jersey law because he remains on parole after more than a decade behind bars for second-degree robbery.

If he’s on parole, he’s still serving his punishment for his crime; he’s only entered a new stage of that punishment.  With his punishment still in progress, he shouldn’t get his right to vote back.  On successful completion of his parole—successful completion of the punishment society has said is required for his crime—then it’s worth seriously considering reenfranchising him and others in similar situations.

And this, from Stackhouse:

We have no say [without a right to vote].  This is one of the worst things you can do to a citizen.

No, Stackhouse did this to himself with his decision to commit his crime; no one else did this to him as a citizen.  His apparent inability to accept responsibility for the outcomes he created with his misbehavior in addition to the misbehavior itself does not suggest that his rehabilitation is being entirely successful.

I am spring-loaded to restore the franchise to those who’ve successfully completed their punishment—for the vast majority of crimes, there should be an endpoint to the punishment short of death, whether by execution or old age.  But the punishment must be completed before reenfranchisement.

It’s Not Your Company

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Seattle wants to charge a head tax on businesses operating in the city, a tax whose amount would be just what it sounds like—a tax based on the number of hours worked by each employee the business has on its payroll.

In response to the proposal, Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, paused construction on a 17-story office tower in downtown Seattle.

In response to Amazon, the Left in Seattle, spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union-backed activist gang—Working Washington—wants Amazon charged with a felony.

Amazon, after all, doesn’t belong to its investors, and it’s not run by Bezos.  No, the activists, the SEIU, and the city’s governing machine that wants the tax, all insist that Amazon is public property, and it must do what they demand, not what its owners want.

Because those owners don’t own that.  They only hold it in conditional fee from these city Know Betters.

Is Seattle as much a harbinger of future Progressive-Democrat demands as is Jerry Brown’s California?

Update: The Seattle City Council on Tuesday voted 9-0 to impose the head tax, although rather than being based on hours worked per employee, it’s a flat head tax: $275 per employee per year.

“Not Culturally American”

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That’s what April Ryan, CNN’s star news analyst has said about First Lady Melania Trump.

Not culturally American.  Never mind that Melania Trump emigrated to the United States and has enthusiastically embraced our American culture with open arms and all her heart.  She’s as American as it gets.

Since Ryan wants to go there, let’s do.  Who’s really not “culturally American?”  How about ex-First Lady Michelle Obama who never thought well of our country and only claimed pride in it when hubby Barack started gaining ground in the 2008 Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primaries and she started gaining status?

How about that same hubby who spent his eight years in office playing un-American identity politics, calling cops ignorant, and ridiculing Americans as bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters?

How about Hillary Clinton, who spent her campaign ridiculing Americans as irredeemably deplorable misogynistic and racist homophobes because they didn’t support her campaign?

And how about April Ryan who insists that a white woman émigré isn’t culturally American?

Ryan’s attitude is disgusting.  And CNN is just as disgusting for condoning such smears by its…associate.

“I Lost Because I’m a Capitalist”

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Hillary Clinton’s latest excuse for why she lost the 2016 Presidential election is that she’s a capitalist.

Hillary Clinton claimed Wednesday that declaring herself to be a “capitalist” during the 2016 presidential primaries may have hurt her with Democratic voters.

And she said

It’s hard to know but I mean if you’re in the Iowa caucuses and 41% of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I’m asked “Are you a capitalist?” and I say, “Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.” You know, that probably gets lost in the “Oh my gosh, she’s a capitalist!”

Sounds like a Republican campaign ad to me.  Maybe something along the lines of “The Democratic Party—proud Socialists.  Is that really what we need in DC?  Is that really who we are as a nation?”