Category Archives: culture

Wrong or Incompetent?

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Howard Kurtz had a piece up this week decrying the NLMSM’s performance with its “reporting.”

With one blunder after another over the last 10 days, the press is on a losing streak that is starting to take a toll on its collective credibility.

In two cases of…error…the pseudo-reporters got dates critically wrong.  One involved a claim, confirmed by two other “news” outlets, that Donald Trump, Jr, had received a decryption key to some collusion-related, Wikileaks-held emails prior to their release.

But the collusion allegation collapsed when it turned out the email was actually sent 10 days later, when the hacked DNC material had already been made public.

Another outlet suspended its star reporter (notice that: they didn’t fire him) over another missed date.

His original report said Trump had ordered Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians during the campaign, which suggests collusion. But Trump actually directed Flynn to do so during the transition, as president-elect, when such diplomatic outreach would be routine….

Both of those instances relied on carefully anonymous sources, and in both of those cases the imitation reporters knew through their own sources that those dates were at best suspect and likely wrong.

The press’ losing streak is “starting to take a toll on its collective credibility?”  No, the press has had no credibility for a very long time; the current losing streak is only corroborating that.

Kurtz’ problem in assessing all of this is that he’s a man who knows no other business than what passes for modern journalism.  He’s been steeped in an industry that used have a simple, fundamental requirement: that the use of anonymous sources had to have, in the same article, corroboration by at least two on-the-record sources.  Instead, Kurtz’ business has made the conscious decision to walk away from that standard and, instead, to rely solely on carefully unidentified, deliberately anonymous sources.  As a result, we readers cannot assess the reliability of the sources and so of the articles; we cannot even determine whether those sources exist or the claims made are just manufactured rumors.

Wrong or incompetent, Trump asks in one of his ubiquitous tweets.  I say dishonest.  And Kurtz, raised as he’s been in a whorehouse, knows no other and is unable to see either the amorality or the dishonesty of his fellow residents.

Safe Spaces and Timidity

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Antonia Okofor is an advocate for empowering women, and she argues that the 2nd Amendment is a valuable tool in the empowerment.

She was scheduled to speak at two Liberal (note: not Liberal Arts—they’ve long ago lost that breadth) colleges, Hampshire College and Mount Holyoke.

Hampshire College canceled Okofor’s engagement on short notice—two hours’ notice—claiming that her speech was “too controversial.”  Then the place thought better of its excuse and claimed the trivial technicality of a student application not being complete as the premise for canceling.  This is nonsense: if that had been the reason, school management would have said so in the first place.  On the other hand, the lack of dotted i’s and crossed t’s would have been just as indefensible as an excuse.  This is fear, instead, fear of a better argument.

Mount Holyoke “allowed” Okofor’s speech to proceed, but here the pupils displayed their own timidity.  Their “angst” was centered on the horror of “the idea that women’s rights and safety is being linked with their right to bear arms.”  Empower women, sure, but only in terms of the power of others to protect them.  The Holyoke pupils’ solution was to set up a separate “safe space” where their own Precious Ones could go to hide from such uncomfortable subjects.

We feel that creating a deliberately separate space for conversation rather than holding a direct act of protest will be a more productive action for us without fueling the messaging of the Right.

Because actual participation would require determination and positive action.  Because actual participation would require the effort of rational thought and debate instead of the comfort of inchoate feelings and ducking away.

This is the pseudo-education that our children are getting at Liberal not-Arts places like these two.

When I Get Around to It

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Senator Al Franken (D, MN) announced on the Senate floor—where, among other things, nothing he said would be actionable in a court of law—that he would resign from the Senate as a result of the plethora of women’s accusations of him sexually abusing and assaulting them.

When will he resign?  When he feels like it (my words).  In the coming weeks (his words).

Franken also said he appreciated the

irony that I am leaving while a man who bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who preyed on young girls runs for Senate with the full support of his party

With a couple minor details that give the lie to everything Franken says.  We have hard evidence of Franken’s assaults, and we have his confessions, and we have in his own words what he thinks about his own apologies.  What we have on Franken’s tape is Trump’s bragging about the ability to assault women, not about any actual assaults.  Franken knows this.  Franken also knows full well that Ray Moore, the candidate he was afraid to name, has been accused, but there’s no evidence of wrong-doing—only the unseemliness of a 30-year-old man dating teenaged girls, after first asking and receiving the parents’ permission.

The Progressive-Democratic Party members of the Senate (and of the House, come to that) know this, full well, too.  We’ll see in short order how soon or far away that Party’s leadership thinks “in the coming weeks” should really be.

Confirmation

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…of Palestinian lack of interest in peace with Israel.  Here’s Hamas Politburo Chief, Ismail Haniyeh:

We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy. …  We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision.

And

…10 Palestinians were arrested in East Jerusalem overnight after Molotov cocktails were thrown.

Notice that: this isn’t just protestation of a decision with which the Palestinians disagree.  This is deliberately violent protest.  The decision with which these terrorists disagree is nothing more, in their minds, than an excuse to murder Israelis.

Why Not All of Them?

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President Donald Trump wants Congress—which is to say, Republicans, since the Progressive-Democrats in Congress want nothing to do with any Trump or Republican generally proposal—to take up welfare reform as the next major Government revamp after tax reform goes through (assuming, of course, a few Republican ego-riven snowflakes don’t blow that up).  However, Louise Radnofsky, who wrote the WSJ piece at the link, seems not to understand the scope of the problem.  Commenting on a speech concerning the matter that Trump gave in Missouri a bit ago, Radnofsky wrote this:

The president didn’t offer specifics about which of the dozens of welfare programs he was seeking to change….

How about all of them, Madam?

As Trump put it in that speech,

I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn’t work at all.  And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that’s working his and her ass off….

Now, it’s certainly true that there are welfare queens who are too lazy or too greedy to do actual work when they can get OPM for free.  They’re a small majority, though; most folks have enough self respect to want to work for their living and earn their way.  However, it far too often makes no economic sense whatsoever for them to do so.

Too many folks are trapped in the Progressive-Democrat welfare cage because they don’t have the skill sets needed to get jobs that pay as well as their aggregated welfare checks—and those that would work anyway are steadily being priced out of the low-skill jobs they would take by spreading minimum wage laws that require employers to pay more than the work available is worth.

Then there’s the welfare cliff.  Far too often, getting a job or a better job than the one currently held, or even simply accepting a pay raise, would put the person into a high(er) income bracket that would result in a cut in welfare payments greater than the value of the job, the better job, or the pay raise.  This net reduction in income would be lunacy, except for its effect on keeping folks trapped and voting for the politicians who control the handouts.

Reform all of the welfare programs, reform our welfare system as a system, and reform it extensively.  Go down, Trump and Congress, and let these people go.