Because it’s my blog, and so I get to.
Gene Malcolm (@spike012002) has a tweet up:
Next, Japanese businessman will start wearing business suits. When will this cultural appropriation end?
There also is a joke wandering the rounds:
Q: What’s the difference between Los Angeles and yogurt?
A: One of them has a living culture.
Which makes me wonder, in the context of Malcolm’s tweet: between LA and yogurt, which is inflicting cultural appropriation?
Here are some stats regarding Obamacare’s impact on our poor, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
More than one in three of taxed [via the individual mandate penalty] households earned less than $25,000, which is roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four.
And
More than 75% of penalized households made less than $50,000 and nine in 10 earned less than $75,000.
And
Fewer families paid the tax in 2015 than in 2014, yet government revenues increased to more than $3 billion from about $1.7 billion, as the financial punishment for lacking coverage increased.
Never mind that these honest Americans can’t afford what Obamacare has on offer, they still have to pay the tax. Never mind that what is on offer is so bad they won’t buy it; they’d rather pay a tax they can ill afford.
This is what Senator John McCain (R, AZ) has said he prefers to Graham-Cassidy, never minding that the Arizona governor (for whom McCain claims great admiration) has strongly endorsed the bill. This is what Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) has said is better than a bill that repeals much of the funding for Obamacare and sends it instead to the States so they can set up their own health insurance/health coverage plan markets—including State-level Obamacare, if that’s their preference—never minding that States’ Rights has been part of his mantra since his first Senate election campaign. This is what Senator Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) seems to want to preserve over Graham-Cassidy‘s elimination of her State’s exploding premiums and imploding plan provider participation. This is what Senator Susan Collins seems to want to preserve, never minding Maine’s governor endorsement of the bill.
The WSJ pointed out that
…the point of this coercion was to substitute the government’s political preferences for individual judgment….
Just as these four Senators are substituting their own political preferences for the individual judgments of their constituents—whom the four are betraying with their support for Obamacare over Graham-Cassidy.
Remember this for the coming primary election season.
Recall the Department of Education’s 2011 egregious and cynically biased Dear Colleague Letter and its attack on due process and equal protection under law. Things are being restored to legitimacy under the Betsy DeVos DoEd via interim guidance just issued.
Colleges can now apply a higher standard of proof when determining guilt in sexual misconduct cases and must offer equal opportunity for the accused and accuser to have legal advisers participate in their hearings, according to interim recommendations issued by the US Department of Education on Friday.
Because
The Education Department on Friday formally rescinded guidelines issued by the Obama administration in 2011 and 2014….
There is one item to be cleared up; hopefully it will be when formal, final guidance is issued by DoEd.
Schools now have the discretion to apply either the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, or the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard….
The criminal standard, preponderance of the evidence, must be the only standard allowed. And the accusation must be investigated by the police, not by ad hoc amateurish kangaroo courts and pseudo-investigators of school faculty or staff. A victim of sexual misconduct is not helped in the slightest by a jumped up school tribunal bent on social justice rather than justice.
Even Howard Kurtz seems to be catching on, as he wrote for Fox News.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation leaks are continuing apace.
Suddenly, there are a whole lot of leaks about Paul Manafort.
Could this, just possibly, be the special counsel’s way of putting pressure on President Trump’s former campaign chairman?
And
[T]he detailed nature of the leaks is also troubling. As a onetime Justice Department reporter, I can tell you that such leaks in a criminal investigation are rare, as well as illegal.
Here are two of the latest Mueller team leaks (leaks Mueller continues to allow, if not encourage, as demonstrated by his choosing to do nothing about stopping them):
The [New York] Times discloses that when federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at Manafort’s Virginia home in July, they picked the lock. As for details, the story says the agents not only took documents and copied computer files, “they even photographed the expensive suits in his closet.”
Who knows such detail other than Mueller’s agents conducting the raid (assuming we can accept that the NYT isn’t making up such entertaining items)? Certainly not Manafort; had he been there he surely would have opened the door for the agents.
And
CNN reported that federal investigators wiretapped Manafort both before and after the election.
Certainly, Manafort or anyone associated with him would not have known about the taps and so could not have leaked this item. Their knowledge would have defeated the purpose of the tap.
And another leak, this one unmentioned by Kurtz:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has interviewed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The only people familiar with the investigation would be Rosenstein and his team and Mueller and his team. Rosenstein and his associates have no interest in leaking this interview; indeed, Rosenstein and his associates plainly know better than to leak, both from a legal perspective and a political one as members of the Trump administration. Only Mueller has an interest in leaking this interview.
It’s time for Mueller and his team to be fired for cause and an honest cop put in charge of the special investigation, together with an honest team of investigators. And yes, at this late date, an honest investigation needs to occur—promptly, efficiently, and speedily—in order quickly and without further delay or stall either to vindicate Manafort, Trump, the Trump campaign, et al., or to produce legitimate and serious charges.
And Mueller and each member of his team need to be investigated regarding the felonious nature of these leaks.
David Pyrooz and James Densley had some thoughts on this in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. They’re on the right track in that they urge Antifa be formally designated a gang with all the social—and legal—ramifications that would flow.
There are a couple of points I’d like to make or emphasize.
[D]on’t be fooled by Antifa’s diffuse structure. Conventional street gangs are pretty disorganized too.
Diffuse isn’t, of necessity, disorganized: the Bloods and Crips, which Pyrooz and Densley cite in their piece; the Black P-Stone Nation; al Qaeda; and the Daesh all are diffuse, by design, and well organized.
The emphasis:
Which brings us to the caveat: most gangs are apolitical. The line between domestic extremist groups and gangs is blurry at times. Antifa’s agenda sets it apart to the extent….
No, Antifa’s agenda doesn’t set it apart. Antifa meets the definition of “gang” laid out by Pyrooz and Densley. There’s no need to cloud the question with concern about motive.
Aside from that, we convict criminals for their behavior, not for their alleged motives. Motive is a concern only for sentencing.
Further aside: much of Blood, Crip, and Black P-Stone Nation behavior is domestically terrorist in nature; they consciously use terror to control their territories. We don’t waste time on irrelevant labels on their members; when they behave criminally, we convict them for that behavior, not for their “purposes.”
The irrelevancy of a “domestic terrorist” label was correctly dismissed by Pyrooz and Densley.
Just apply the “gang” designation, and move on from there with the full force of the law and the courts.