Category Archives: culture

Another Battle

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…in the Progressive war on women.

Here’s it’s the Obama administration’s response to Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s injunction staying Obama’s  contraceptive mandate as it applies to the Little Sisters of the Poor and their nursing home/hospice in Colorado.  Sotomayor, in issuing her injunction, had ordered the Obama administration to respond by last Friday morning with their argument for why the injunction should be lifted.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s response boiled down to the Little Sisters have no legal claim: they aren’t harmed by authorizing contraceptives to be covered by an insurer in their name because they aren’t offering the coverage directly.  Verrilli went on:

…are not required to offer group health plans in the first place.  [They can make a] “choice” between two legal options: provide a group health plan or risk payment of the tax.

As The Wall Street Journal put it,

This case is simply a raw assertion of state power directing the religious to follow orders.  Thus ObamaCare forces women who have taken a vow of chastity and minister for the dying to implicate themselves in what they consider to be grave moral wrongs.

Wow

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Just—wow.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) sent out a paranoid email Saturday evening urging supporters to vote for Democrats so that Republicans can’t impeach President Obama.

The email, subject line “Impeachment,” was sent to Obama for America supporters, imploring them to contribute to the DNC’s 2014 efforts.  “What do these people all have in common?,” the email asked, featuring quotes from Republican Sen James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Rep Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Rep Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, and Rep Blake Farenthold of Texas discussing the possibility of impeaching Obama for one of his numerous instances of presidential misconduct.

They’re also calling for boycotts of news and opinion outlets that don’t read from DNC-approved scripts of speak Party-approved speech.  In a separate email to “Friend,” they implored, among other things,

All they [RNC leadership] need to do is encourage their fellow Republican leaders to stop making time for interviews with outlets like these.

That email can be seen here.

More fluff pieces.  With stuff like this, is it possible to take the Democratic Party and its candidates seriously?  Unfortunately, we do have to; they’re still far too dangerous to our country.

Racism

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…and the left.  Yet another demonstration.

This time, it’s MSNBC and their gang: Melissa Harris-Perry, a PhD in Political Science and a Professor at Tulane, in addition to hosting a weekend opinion piece on the cable network; Pia Glenn, a panelist on the Harris-Perry racist segment in question; and Dean Obeidallah, another panelist on the segment; among others.

The occasion was a family portrait photo of Mitt Romney’s family, with his adopted grandson, who happens to be black, on his knee: this afforded the aforementioned trio an opportunity for their…japes.

Harris-Perry:

[M]y goal is that in 2040, the biggest thing of the year will be the marriage between Kieran Romney and North West.  Can you imagine Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?

Because—well because what, exactly?

Pia Glenn:

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn’t the same.

“Things,” is it?  And “it” is a cause for derision because he’s black baby in a predominantly white family?  Or is the “joke” that it’s a predominantly white family with a black baby family member?

Obeidallah:

…really sums up the diversity of the Republican Party, the RNC.  At the convention they find the one black person.

Because a baby, especially, makes a fine tool for a racist attack on those whose impudence leads them to disagree with you.

It gets worse, with their cynically faux apologies.

Obediah tweeted

I apologize to the baby if the baby was offended by my joke mocking GOP’s lack or [sic] racial diversity.

If?  If!?  And not a word to the Romney family, adult enough to understand the slur?  No, still picking on the baby.  And his “apology:” caveated on the premise that the outcome might not actually have occurred.  And regretting only that possible outcome, with not a syllable of apology for his actual misbehavior.

He extended his demonstration with this to CNN:

Occasionally my jokes have been known to “cross the line” and I can assure you that in the future some of my jokes will do that again.  My joke on MHP was not intended in any way to mock the Romney family or the baby they adopted.  Rather it was a joke about the lack of racial diversity that we see at the Republican National Convention.  I apologize to the Romney family and especially the baby if any of them were offended by that joke.

Yeah—he’s proud of the fact that he goes over the line, proud of the fact that he uses babies as political tools, and he intends to do so again.  And there’s that caveated regret only for a possible outcome, again, with not a bit of apology for the racist “joke,” or even just for the racist nature of it.

This pair of tweets from Glenn:

Yes, I sang the song.  There are many children in the pic & only 1 black child.  I don’t see that as mocking or attacking the baby.

If I point out the 1 black person & you translate that as an attack ON HIM, who’s racist?  I don’t personally see anything wrong with being black.

Well, Madam, you’re the only one who thinks a black baby in a predominantly white family is a big deal.  You’re the only one who’s making race an issue here.

It’s true enough that Glenn later issued an almost structurally correct apology,

I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices[,]

but at this late date, and given those earlier remarks, it’s impossible for me to believe her sincerity.

This from Harris-Perry:

I am sorry.  Without reservation or qualification.  I apologize to the Romney family.

Which came, carefully, Wednesday, well after her weekend…performance.  Here, too, even though her “apology” is sound structurally, it’s impossible for me to believe its sincerity.  Better to have said this last Monday, best by the end of her show.

Their racism is so ingrained, they can’t even recognize it.

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it in 2014.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun.  Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than I.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.  Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.  Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson

A Thought on Immigration and Amnesty

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The immigration debate in Washington boils down to a debate over how to handle the country’s 11 million or so illegal residents.  A Washington Post editorial over the weekend suggested a compromise: let them stay but don’t give them citizenship.

No.  Either we believe in redemption and rehabilitation, or we don’t.  We do believe in it, at least tacitly, for other criminal behavior—capital murder and sex offenses nearly the only things that are excepted.  And sex offenses get heinous acts.  Nearly all other offenses against us or our society have endpoints to the penalty exacted, and then the offender pretty much is allowed to go on his way with a clean slate.

A man enters our country illegally, though, and after that single and singular crime, he makes himself a productive member of his community.  On what basis do we insist that this crime is so heinous that he must pay for it for the rest of his life—the he must be denied any opportunity to earn citizenship in our country?  On what basis do we say his illegal entry—his sole crime (and it is a crime, no doubt)—is of a piece with capital murder or molesting a child?

Pay a price for having entered illegally?  Pay a price for having violated a traffic law?  Certainly.  And that means there’s no amnesty, either for the illegal entry or the traffic violation.  But there’s also more to this than just the utilitarianism of punishment for a crime and calling it square.  There’s the morality of it—redemption and rehabilitation.  We give that much to our felons, why not also to a man whose only crime is that he came illegally into our country to make a better life for himself and his family?  No.  Allowing a path along which to earn citizenship, a path that includes a price for illegal entry, isn’t amnesty.

The man who comes here and makes his way, who becomes a contributing member of our society—that’s the kind of man we want to immigrate.  That’s the kind of initiative, of drive, of work ethic, of desire to make a better life that brings creativity to our economy and to our nation.