Category Archives: culture

He’s Missed the Point

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John Downs, President and CEO of the National Confectioners Association, wrote a Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor objecting to Maine Governor Paul LePage’s (R) effort to get junk food off the list of foods for which Maine’s food stamps can be used.

Downs supplied a lot of numbers indicating that everyone, food stamp recipient or other, eats junk food and touting the limits of sugar in the junk food consumed.  But he missed the point.

As long as folks are going to use OPM to buy their food (and for the most part, us OP are perfectly willing to have our funds used for a hand up for those having even an extended rough patch), us OP get to say how our M will be spent in such matters.  And the fact is, food stamps should be used to buy staples only.  Everything else is a luxury, and luxuries should be outside any welfare program.

Like anyone else, of course food stamp recipients want to enjoy some of luxury, including junk food.  In that case, they should get a job so they can afford to spend their own money on their luxuries.  I sympathize with those who can’t find a job (perhaps they’ve been priced out of one by minimum wage laws), but that doesn’t legitimize luxury in a welfare program.

Downs missed the point of the proposed restriction.  But he has a vested interested in missing it.

What Are They Trying to Hide?

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The House of Representatives has voted to release a 4-pg memo delineating various misbehaviors of the FBI during its “investigation” of Trump campaign behaviors during the 2016 election campaign.  The FBI publicly demurs.

…the FBI [has] “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

This is rich, coming from an FBI that had to be threatened with contempt of Congress before it would end its year-long stonewall and turn over material (some of which is summarized in the memo) that had been long subpoenaed.  As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R, CA) said in response to this particular ludicrosity,

The FBI is intimately familiar with “material omissions” with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts….

Nunes added

they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses[.]

The FBI also is claiming concerns about giving up methods and sources with the memo’s exposure.  They conveniently forget that the memo has been vetted for that sort of thing by the Intelligence Committee and is being so vetted by the White House, where the memo now sits being checked by the National Security Advisor.  Both of these agencies are fully capable of such vetting, and no less so than the FBI.

Hence my question.

Update: The memo was released, and the evidence is damning.  We hear from the hysteria in the Progressive-Democrats and the NLMSM their desperation after they failed to block the memo’s release.  And this bit of emphasis and clarification from Nunes on FoxNews‘ Special Report Friday afternoon after the memo’s release (via Richard Fernandez and a commenter):

(excerpt) “Just step back for a moment,” Nunes explained. “This is not trying to go after some terrorist. This is about — they opened, the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. That’s what happened.”

He continued: “And then they got a warrant on someone in the Trump campaign using opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. That’s what this is about. And it’s wrong and it should never be done.” (end excerpt)

Why is that important?

The significance of the warrant against Carter Page, was made October 21st, 2016, under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [Meaning the surveillance application was specifically stating, to the court, the U.S. individual was likely an actual agent of a foreign government, ie. “a spy.”] (by sundance, Conservative Tree House) And renewed every 90 day period three times.

Why is it significant?
(1) as explained, designating Carter Page as foreign agent (spy), intelligence committee can spy on ANYBODY in contact with Page, even after he’s no longer part of the Trump team;

(2) the FISA warrant continued well into the first year of Trump presidency. Let both points sink in for a bit.

The Obama administration manufactured an espionage beef against Page instead of getting an “ordinary” FISA warrant that would have limited the scope and duration of its own spying.  Keep in mind, too, that no evidence has been turned up to indicate Page really is, or was, a Russian spy.  He was approached, certainly.  Nearly any American with even the most minimal set of connections is going to be approached by an apparatus of the Russian government.  That’s who the Russians are.  The available evidence, though, indicates he either ignored the approach or rebuffed it.

 

A Thought on American Women’s Gymnastics

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Unless you’ve been vacationing unplugged under a rock for the last several months, you’re aware of the atrocities committed by Larry Nassar, the ex-pseudo-doctor for the US’ women’s gymnastics team.  Now we find out that

The US Olympic Committee didn’t intervene in USA Gymnastics’ handling of sexual-abuse allegations against longtime national-team doctor Larry Nassar in 2015, even after USA Gymnastics’ then-president told two top USOC executives that an internal investigation had uncovered possible criminal behavior by the doctor against Olympic athletes.

And pursuant to a lawsuit,

the organization [USOC] said it was “first made aware of the possibility that a USA Gymnastics physician had sexually abused USA Gymnastics athletes in the summer of 2015, when we were informed by USA Gymnastics.”

Gymnastics is a physically dangerous and mentally stressful sport, as are most competitive sports.  Our women, and our girls, who participate in this game don’t need the added stress, much less the added damage, of sexual misbehaviors, sexual harassment, sexual assault inflicted on them by those placed in positions of power or authority over them—trainers, coaches, doctors, anyone.

I think it has become necessary to shut down women’s gymnastics as a formal sport in the US for a significant period of time, perhaps 2-5 years.  The time is necessary to completely revamp the sport and purge the criminals and the merely misbehaving personnel, folks like the imitation doctor Nassar, just convicted of harassments and of assaults against our girls; folks like the Karolyis, whose “training” techniques at best don’t align with American values; others who mistreat our girl and woman athletes while pretending merely to “toughen up the buttercups” or who get their jollies from molestations.

USA Gymnastics and the women’s side of the United States Olympic Committee must cease to exist.  When the time comes, replacements for USAG and that portion of USOC must be created from the ground up.  Anyone associated with USAG and USOC and anyone associated with those personnel out to and including the second degree of association must be banned from participation also.

Full stop.

One more item: the boys and men’s side of this needs a full, deep, and independent investigation, too, on general principles.  What deeply nefarious affairs are going on there that we don’t know about?  Hopefully none, but it’s time to look closely.

In Which the New York Times and the BBC Miss Again

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It seems the women journalists in the pay of the BBC were being paid significantly less than their male colleagues, to the point that Carrie Gracie, BBC’s China Editor, resigned her position in protest (I’m citing a New York Times report about the BBC.  Why that’s important, rather than citing a BBC report directly, will come clear in a bit).  Gracie has returned to London, still a BBC journalist, but there she’ll be paid the same as her male colleagues.

And how did that equal pay come about, you might ask?

According to “the organization” (presumably a BBC mucky-muck or BBC mucky-muck’s spokesman),

The BBC has agreed to pay cuts with a number of leading BBC News presenters, and others have agreed in principle[.]

Jeremy Vine, one of the high-powered, and highly paid, journalists getting his pay cut, agreed with the move, and he did so in all seriousness.

I think it needs to be sorted out, and I support my female colleagues who have rightly said they should be paid the same when they’re doing the same job.  I think the BBC’s on it, and this story is part of it.

Wow.  Just wow.

If Gracie really is the doing substantially the same work as her colleagues, why shouldn’t she get a pay raise to get to substantially the same pay?  That’s how bad it is, folks.  This is the Left’s mindset.  It doesn’t even occur to them to raise the pay of the lower paid.  All they can think of is to cut the higher paid.

Hold back the successful.  Don’t push forward those behind.  Instead of a win-win outcome, the Left prefers the everybody loses outcome.

On second thought, the NYT, which was as silent on the pay cut/pay raise question as the BBC, and the BBC didn’t miss.  This is what progressives, the Liberal NLMSM, and the US’ Progressive-Democratic Party want.  Hold back the ones ahead, don’t help the ones behind catch up.

Another Reason

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Now it’s just getting petty.  For the period surrounding this year’s Super Bowl, P Boston is banning anything to do with Philadelphia from the city.

Boston is banning cheesesteaks, Philadelphia cream cheese, beers associated with Philadelphia.  One Boston-based bakery chain even has cut ties—permanently—with its Philadelphia cream cheese distributor.

Boston is getting hysterical, too.  In addition to banning foodstuffs, that city is banning people: Will Smith and Sylvester Stallone, one because he was raised in Philadelphia, the other because he set the Rocky series of films in that city.  Even bald eagles—can you believe it?—are banned from the Esplanade.

This is another reason not to bother with the Super Bowl, at least for this year.