Category Archives: morality

More on the Integrity of the Left

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Here are some of the more egregious examples.  The primary Obama-supporting SuperPAC, Priorities USA, is planning to run an ad—an ad that’s already on the Internet—that accuses Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney of being personally responsible for an ex-steel worker’s wife’s death from cancer.  The ad itself is dishonest:

  • The man’s wife died five years after GST, the steel company for which the man worked, filed for bankruptcy.
  • Romney had long since left Bain Capital at the time of her death.
  • His wife had her own health insurance after the man had left GST.
  • The man’s wife died at a time when Bain actually was being run by a major Obama bundler.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been dishonest in connection with this ad:

  • Obama denied, through his Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, that he “doesn’t know the facts” about the steelworker or his story, doesn’t know when the man’s wife became ill or anything about the man’s insurance coverage.  Yet last May, Cutter hosted a conference call in which the man detailed his story, including the specifics now appearing in this ad.
  • Obama, through his campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, insisted that “we can’t coordinate with super PACs and didn’t produce” the ad.
  • Obama has given the green light for members of his cabinet to attend fundraisers for his political action committees.
  • The existence of the conference call, followed by its information appearing in Priorities USA’s ad, together with the SuperPAC fundraising efforts, demonstrate that all of this has occurred: coordination, the Obama staff’s role in the ad’s production, and active Obama White House participation in the “independent” SuperPACs’ efforts.
  • As recently as Friday, Obama still was denying, through his press spokesman, Jay Carney, any involvement or knowledge of the sordid affair.

And there’s this.

Lauren Gray is a dancer who turned 21 last Wednesday and has lived in the US as a legal resident alien since she was 4 years old, having come here when her parents came from England on work visas.  As an adult in her own right, she now must get her own visa in order to stay.  She was on track to get her green card when her priority was dumped, without explanation, into a two-year wait—which means she would have had to return to England—a nation that’s hers by birth but not by loyalty, life, or anything that matters.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s immigration fiat, though, gives those who are in the US illegally a prompt stay—they have only to aver having themselves come here as children and having stayed out of trouble since, and they get, promptly, documents allowing them to continue staying in two-year increments.

Gray has been working with “her” Congressmen (Senator Claire McCaskill, D; Senator Roy Blunt, R; and Congressman Sam Graves, R) from Missouri, the state in which she’s been living her life, seeking assistance, and at the last minute Senator McCaskill was able to get permission for Gray to stay in the US legally until her green card request works its way through the system.  Gray will get a work visa, renewable every two years.

But why did a United States Senator have to get involved?  How many others here legally are being forced out—because they’ve outgrown their parent’s visas, or their student visas or their H-series visas have expired, or…?  This is an outcome of Obama’s immigration amnesty by fiat program—as Obama knew when he issued his “Dream Act” edict; he is, after all, a highly intelligent man and a Harvard-trained lawyer.  He knew full well what the results of his Presidential Bull would include.

Finally, there’s this:

The law breakers that were in the defunct Occupy Wall Street crowd are getting a pass from the Democratic Candidate’s White House.  Emails from the General Services Administration (remember this gang of partiers?) obtained by Fox News indicate that, on orders from the White House, the GSA instructed Federal law enforcement in Portland, OR, not to enforce curfews on protesters camped out on Federal property.  This exchange between DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate Chief of Staff, Caitlin Durkovich, and GSA’s Public Buildings Service Commissioner, Robert Peck, illustrates:

Durkovich: They have chained themselves to a large drum filled with concrete. GSA controls the permits and has asked [Federal Protective Services] not to enforce the curfew at park and the prohibition on overnight encampments…. Our FPS Commander in Portland says they are standing down and following GSA’s request to only intervene if there is a threat to public safety.

Peck: Caitlin: yes, that is our position; it’s been vetted with our administrator and Michael Robertson, our chief of staff, and we have communicated with the [White House], which has afforded us the discretion to fashion our approach to Occupy issues….  The arrests last week were carried out despite our request that the protesters be allowed to remain and to camp overnight….

Never mind that “the arrests last week” were these:  25 demonstrators arrested after they refused to leave Jamison Square in the Pearl District after the park was closed after “an intense standoff.”  And never mind the impact that waiving the law and letting lawbreakers, en masse, go free has on “public safety.”

Obamanomics and Life Expectancy

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Power Line quoted, earlier in the week, a Cato-conducted tongue-in-cheek study that applies Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s standard for attributing deaths to economic behavior, with the arithmetically driven conclusion that Obama has personally killed nearly 60,000 Americans with his own policies.  The Republican Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney, plainly is a piker who does not kill efficiently, having done in only one, and taken far more time to do so.

Of course, the claim by the Democratic Presidential Candidate through his SuperPAC is dishonest, and the claim by Cato is ludicrous and made only to illustrate that point.  A fair question to ask, though, is what is the impact on American lives the Democratic Presidential Candidate has had with Obamanomics?  The answer is apparent.

The connection between poverty level and life expectancy has been well established, as the following graph (which takes a broad-brush view of splitting between poor and rich; however in the present context, finer gradations are not needed) illustrates:

The life expectancy delta between “rich” and “poor” over the 20 years of this study has reached +4-ish years in favor of the “rich” for the population in general, with a larger disparity among men.

On the other hand, the number of Americans living in poverty has been growing sharply during the 3+ years of Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s current term on the hustings.  In 2010, the number of Americans living in poverty was 15.1% of the population, while that had risen to 15.7% in 2011—an increase of 2.2 million Americans reduced to poverty in just that one year.  If we go back to 2009, we see an increase of some 5.2 million Americans living in poverty under Obamanomics.

The Democratic Presidential Candidate’s policies have shortened the lives of 5 million Americans by roughly four years—and he’s achieved this in only three years of campaigning.

The New Jim Crow?

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I’ve written about racism and religious bigotry here, here, and here.

Now I want to take a broader view.  We’ve had, in quick succession in the last very few years, the following.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandates that businesses and insurers to provide, at no cost to the insurees, health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients, without regard for the religious beliefs of the businesses or insurers.  This mandate also requires Americans to buy such health insurance coverage (even though these added items are to be provided at no additional cost), regardless of the religious beliefs of these individual Americans—or to accept the coverage from their employers.  There is an “exemption” that allows businesses to put this off onto their insurers, but this cynically ignores, among others, those entities who self-insure.

Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas (D), says that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is appealing to racists who do not want a black man in the White House.

I absolutely believe it’s all about race, and for the first time in my life I’ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well[.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) suggesting that Republicans are simply manipulating American Jews for political gain.

HUNT: That’s why some of the Republican Jewish supporters are really active.

PELOSI: Well, that’s how they’re being exploited. And they’re smart people. They follow these issues.

Unions, in one overt case, are attempting to keep black children down on the plantation, at least in Louisiana.

[L]awyers for the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state’s two major teachers unions, threatened private and parochial schools with lawsuits if the schools accept students participating in a new school choice initiative that starts this year.

The Maryland State Board of Education has established a policy of race-based discipline, regardless of the nature of the misbehavior.

President Obama’s Department of Justice, shortly after Obama took office, dismissed a civil case against New Black Panther members, accused of voter intimidation against white voters, after the case had been won by default through the non-appearance of the defendants.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening Steubenville, OH, with civil suit if the city doesn’t remove a cross from the city’s logo—a logo that

includes several local landmarks, including the Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel

which, oh by the way, has a cross on it.

The ACLU has been attacking America’s fallen soldiers and their families for years, using, for instance, the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross as a vehicle.  The ACLU wants the military decoration—the cross—removed.  Worse, the Obama administration now is attempting to “negotiate” a settlement with the ACLU without including the central party to the controversy, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, in the talks.

US District Judge Fred Biery, in response to a complaint from a single family, blocked a Texas school district’s “invocation” and “benediction” and banned any prayer at the ceremony altogether, even threatening the valedictorian with jail if she mentioned God in her speech.

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs  demanded that the pastor presiding over a private funeral at the Houston National Cemetery not make religious references in his prayers at the soldier’s burial.

Progressive leaders also attack conservative women.  Bill Maher said this of Governor Sarah Palin:

Did you hear this—Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you—

And we get this about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R, MN):

Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public.  But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.

The list goes on.  Are we seeing, now, a resurgence of the attitudes of Jim Crow, but with a different, broader, more unfocused set of bigotries?

Apparently Some Don’t Actually Work for a Living

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A beef about lawyers’ fees in a bankruptcy exposes some attitudes about actual work.  In the Washington Mutual bankruptcy case, finally wrapping up the last details—like allocating the legal fees—generated this argument: some of WaMu’s creditors didn’t like the size of the fees awarded, since those would cut into the creditors’ recovery.

The core of the beef was that the billing included 24-hour days and working through weekends, resulting in weeks’ worth of work without breaks.

Hmm….

Any graduate student would be familiar with that.

And the bankruptcy judge on the case, Mary Walrath, an ex-bankruptcy lawyer herself, was having none of it, either.

The day I started at my firm they filed a huge Chapter 11 case and I did not take a day off for six months.  I am not surprised that there were many days of even 24 hours because I spent those times in the office as well.

Are Harry Reid and Joe Biden Bigots?

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this the other day on the Senate floor—and it’s the second time he’s made this particular accusation:

The word’s out that [Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney] hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.

What’s with this religious bigotry?  What does Reid have against Mormons?

And this, according to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one[.]”

Reid did apologize for these racist remarks, but still.  Would he have made either set of remarks (he refuses to apologize for his religious assault) in the first place were he not prejudiced?

Next, there’s then-Senator Joe Biden about then-candidate Barack Obama:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking buy.  I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Biden did issue a caveated statement that he masqueraded as an apology, but again—would he have made these remarks in the first place were he not prejudiced, just a little?

By Reid’s own logic, it’s not on the questioner to provide any proof at all (although I have offered their own words in support of my questions, which is more than they have done).  It’s entirely on the target to provide the proof of their innocence.

I ask, again: are Harry Reid and Joe Biden racists?  They have a lot to answer for.  Where’s their proof?