Category Archives: morality

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.

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.

Hypocrisy

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…is alive and well in the National Football League.  The NFL invited American Veterans, a major veterans support organization, to submit an ad for the Super Bowl advertising suite.  So AMVET did.

It turns out the NFL just wanted to look good in the public shower; it wasn’t at all serious.  Having received AMVET’s submission, they chose to reject it.  The ad committed the heinous crime of asking folks to stand for the national anthem.  The NFL’s excuse?  The Super Bowl is

designed for fans to commemorate and celebrate the game, players, teams, and the Super Bowl…

it’s not a place for political statements.  But NFL allows football players to insult our veterans and attack our national anthem, including planned kneelings at the upcoming Super Bowl.  That’s not a political statement, though.

Consider this carefully as you decide whether you want to watch what used to be a great game.  Consider, also, whether you want to drop a dime, next year, on the NFL, given its support for its players’ attacks on our national anthem and their insults to generations of our veterans.

Exaggeration?

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No, it’s worse than that.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), in his continuing ducking of responsibility for his Progressive-Democratic Party’s decision to shut down the Federal government, frequently makes this…claim:

A party that controls the House, the Senate, and the presidency would rather sit back and point fingers of blame than roll up their sleeves and govern.

No, this is no petty exaggeration; it’s just another example of Schumer’s dishonesty. Neither party controls the Senate unless it has a 60-vote majority.  That makes governing impossible when the minority party in the Senate refuses to negotiate in good faith, when the minority party puts its collective ego ahead the nation’s weal.  Schumer knows these things.

This would be OBE with the end of the Progressive-Democrats’ shutdown of the government, but for the durability of Schumer’s disingenuosity.

True Colors

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The Progressive-Democrats, especially those in the Senate, have shown their true colors as they voted last Friday to shut down the Federal government, voting to block a temporary funding agreement that would have kept the government open for another month.  I wrote earlier about that shutdown’s practical effects.

Here’s what the Progressive-Democrats voted to kill: six years of funding for CHIP, so now some millions of children in our poverty-level families will have no access to health insurance.  DACA reform so that those illegal immigrant children could have some hope for their future.

CHIP funding was in the stop-gap bill, but now there’s no funding for it, and the program has expired.

DACA reform was not in the bill, having nothing to do with funding, but the Progressive-Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) demanded it be included or there would be no votes from his Party (in the event, five Progressive-Democrats from Republican States whose seats are in jeopardy in this fall’s elections, knowing their Party would kill the funding, cynically cast their meaningless votes for the bill).  It didn’t matter to these worthies that DACA had until early March to be negotiated or that there already exists bipartisan agreement on the outline and substance of a DACA proposal that could have been debated and voted up by the end of January in a separate bill.  Schumer and his Party cronies demanded their DACA right damn now.  Their attitude has badly poisoned any future DACA negotiations, perhaps fatally.

It gets worse.  There was nothing in the bill to which Progressive-Democrats actually objected.  It funded the government for a time, which the Prog-Dems claim they want.  It funded CHIP, which the Prog-Dems claim they want.  It funded defense, which even Prog-Dems claim they want.  The clean funding bill just didn’t have all the other, unrelated, things the Prog-Dems also demanded.

When Schumer went to the White House late Friday before the vote to deal personally with President Trump, he went with a Christmas tree of Progressive-Democrat demands beyond just DACA for inclusion in the stop-gap bill, including for instance, bailing out public union pension funds, added spending on opoid programs, and on and on.  That Christmas tree is what Schumer was talking about when he said after the meeting that progress had been made, but “we still have a good number of disagreements.”  All of these extras also could have been negotiated and voted on in the ensuing period.

Not good enough.  The Progressive-Democrats voted to shut down the government because the stop-gap didn’t have DACA and Schumer’s Christmas tree.  Party ego before national weal.

Remember this next fall.

Update: The Senate, on another cloture vote later this morning, voted 81-18 to end the filibuster and bring the bill to the floor for an up or down vote. The bill is changed trivially–the funding period is good for three weeks instead of four–but otherwise, it’s the same bill.  Because of that period change, though, it has to go back to the House, where I expect it’ll be voted up forthwith and sent to the President for prompt signing.

In return, Senate Republicans promised negotiations on DACA and on immigration and a vote on DACA. The DACA debate has been going on, all along, as noted above.