Category Archives: morality

Progressive-Democrats and Crises

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We’re seeing their execution of Rahm Emanuel’s theory in spades these days.  The Republican-majority Senate has a proposal in the Senate, agreed in bipartisan fashion with Progressive-Democrat Senators that would aid average Americans and the small, medium, and large businesses—including our farmers and ranchers—weather the government-mandated shutdown of our economy in response to the present Wuhan Virus situation.

The bill would provide loans to businesses to help tide them over the current loss of revenue—many of the loans converted to grants if the businesses retain their employees on the payrolls.

The bill would provide payments of some few thousands of dollars directly to Americans now on lockdowns of varying degrees but that prevent the majority of them from going to work at all, so those individual Americans and their families can stay reasonably current on their ongoing bills.

The bill would facilitate production of badly needed medical supplies, both for the protection of medical personnel and first responders and for the support of hospitalized patients in the care of those medical personnel.

Like I said, these were bipartisanly agreed provisions.  Now those Progressive-Democrats in the Senate have welched on their agreements to these provisions. Now they’re actively—and as a Party—blocking cloture votes so the bill can’t even go to the floor for debate and an up-or-down vote.

Those Progressive-Democrats, having gotten their marching orders from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA)—imagine that: even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has surrendered his Senate authority to Pelosi—who has decided she needs

  • to expand and make permanent unemployment provisions (which would trap the unemployed in the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage)
  • anti-carbon provisions added in
  • collective bargaining measures be added in
  • fuel emissions to be imposed on airlines
  • expansion of subsidies for wind and solar energy

None of these have anything to do with the COVID-19 situation and the associated government-mandated economy shutdown.

Progressive-Democrats’ behavior here is just naked blackmail and the holding of American citizens and our economy hostage for the Progressive-Democrats’ personal and ideological profit.

Remember this all up and down the ballot in November.

Scapegoating

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…and fake apologies.

Recall that Doctor Li Wenliang, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China and an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, gave early warnings about the dangers and contagious nature of the Wuhan virus. Recall further that subsequent to his warnings, the police were sicced on him and that they threatened him if he didn’t shut the hell up. Li subsequently died of that same Wuhan virus.

Now the Communist Party of China is pretending to apologize to his family for that behavior.

The party’s top disciplinary body said the police force in Wuhan had revoked its admonishment of Dr Li Wenliang that had included a threat of arrest.
It also said a “solemn apology” had been issued to Li’s family and that two police officers, identified only by their surnames, had been issued “disciplinary punishments” for the original handling of the matter.

Punishing two cops who were caught up in the early stages of the CPC’s attacks: nothing like a couple of scapegoats to put an end to the escapade.

Sure.

A Cynical Attitude About Health and Health Coverage

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California demurs from the Trump administration’s position that the State’s mandate to insurers that they must cover abortion violates Federal law.  The administration has said it will withhold Federal funding from the State if it doesn’t correct its insurer demand.

The objection to the Trump administration position offered by California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra, though, is especially disingenuous.

The Trump Administration’s threats not only put women’s health on the line, but illegally threaten crucial public health funding that Californians rely on.

For one thing, if the good citizens of California rely on crucial public health funding, then California should provide it. The citizens of the other States of our nation should not be held accountable for the California government’s spending and revenue decisions.

The larger thing, though is Becerra’s women’s health grandstand. Abortion has much, much more to do with the baby’s health than it has with the mother’s health. While pregnancy can threaten a woman’s health, these are extremely rare cases, and they should be handled on the rare case by case basis in which they exist. Funding for and insurance coverage of these few exceptions can be handled in other guises than funding abortions with Federal dollars.

This Loss is No Loss

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Recall the fact of the tweet that the NBA’s Houston Rockets General Manager sent in support of the Hong Kong freedom protesters.  Recall further the NBA’s abject cowardice in deeply kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China in response to the latter’s projected upset over the tweet and the NBA’s impudence.  The kowtowing was rationalized from the league on down to individual players that they all had money at risk from the GM’s tweet—as if their personal pocketbooks could compare with the sacrifices of life and limb, in addition to economic loss, of those freedom protesters as they struggled for their basic freedoms.

That cowardice was only emphasized, not mitigated, by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s refusal to tell his teams they had to limit what they said. That came lately.

Recall further, the hoo-raw over the picayune nature of the NBA’s kowtowing and the cynically fiscally-driven rationalizing in which the NBA engaged in defending its response to the PRC government—and its institutional abandonment of those Hong Kong freedom protesters.

Now some information is coming out regarding the cost of the NBA’s behavior—the cost to those pocketbooks the NBA has been so desperate to protect.

The loss “will be in the hundreds of millions,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Saturday, the first time he’d used such a number to estimate the cost to the league’s China business. The hit amounted to “probably less than $400 million,” Silver said in response to speculation that the losses could reach $1 billion….

Silver added,

We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was therefore inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us.

The NBA is still receiving only greatly reduced coverage in the People’s Republic of China.

This isn’t a cost, or a loss. It’s the beginning (and, sadly, probably the end) of the price the NBA should pay for abandoning our American principles, and with them the good people of Hong Kong, in favor of the good opinion of an American enemy.

He Said He’s Sorry

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…and that makes it all better.

Doug Hodge, ex-CEO of PIMCO, wrote an apologia­—I won’t call it an apology—for his participation in the Rick Singer-operated college admissions scandal in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

I have to wonder, though, just how sincere Hodge’s missive is, or whether he wrote it as part of his sentence—for how many hours of community service does this piece count? Or did he write it in return for the short jail term he got (nine whole months for a nearly one million of dollars fraud).

And: words of regret for the shame I have brought upon…my children, but not a syllable for the larger damage he’s done them: his statement, by his actions, that he had no confidence in their own abilities; his going-in assumption, demonstrated by those actions, that he considered them just not good enough to get into a good school without cheating.

No, it doesn’t make anything all better.