Category Archives: politics

“Stand for Something”

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Howard Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association, in the aftermath of a tweet by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey,said in a CNN interview cited by The Wall Street Journal‘s Notable & Quotable,

I think in this day and age, you really do have to stand for something[.]

This is after Rockets players apologized to the PRC for their GM’s tweet, Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta ran away from his GM’s tweet,

Listen….@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets.

and the NBA as a whole affirmed their preference for PRC money over honor.

The NBA really does have to stand for something.

Absolutely.  Except when the NBA comes in for opprobrium from the PRC over a tweet supporting the citizens of Hong Kong. Then the league and its players and team management cower down.

Stand for freedom for the citizens of Hong Kong? They can’t: there’s no headroom under the bed.

An Elizabeth Warren Demand

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) has begun issuing her orders to our private business executives.  And she’s not even the Progressive-Democratic Party nominee for the office, much less the President [bold face emphasis added].

I write in regard to the Business Roundtable’s (BRT) new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation issued on August 19, 2019. … I write for information about the tangible actions you intend to take to implement the principles, including whether, to make good on your commitment, you will implement the steps laid out in the Accountable Capitalism Act I plan to reintroduce in the coming weeks.

And

If you, and the other 181 corporate executives who signed the BRT’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, plan to live up to the promises you made, I expect that you will endorse and wholeheartedly support the reforms laid out in the Accountable Capitalism Act to meet the principles you endorse.

And so on.

A key part (among several key parts) of Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act is her requirement that all businesses above a minimum size must get Federal—not State—charters to continue to operate.

Do what I tell you to do with the corporations you run in my Government’s name, if you know what’s good for you.

This is the core aspect of socialism: Government ownership of an economy’s means of production—the businesses operating in that economy—or Government direction of what nominally privately owned businesses will be permitted to do.

Warren’s letter to those executives can be read here.

Racism in School Admissions

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Federal District Judge Allison Burroughs, of the Massachusetts District, has ruled in a Harvard admissions case that racism in its admissions process is entirely jake.

Race conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process, but this is justified by the compelling interest in diversity and all the benefits that flow from a diverse college population.

With that, Burroughs has exposed her own racist bent.  Her “justification” is just her cynical rationalization of her racism. It stinks.

The WSJ editors in that piece also noted Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s own tortured effort to correct racism in school admissions in his Fisher v University of Texas opinion:

…he wrote that different treatment of an individual because of race is “inherently suspect” and requires “strict scrutiny.”

No, different treatment of an individual because of race wants no strict scrutiny; it wants no scrutiny at all. Such treatment needs to be proscribed altogether from our schools.  To start with.

These folks, Harvard management personnel and bench-sitters alike, more than merely being racist, insult minorities, and actively hold them down, by insisting they just can’t cut it in an evenly done endeavor; they must have that artificial handicap applied. It’s redolent of Woodrow Wilson on segregation: “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”

And they punish the successful by telling them they’re too good for their own good.

Hong Kong Police out of Control?

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Or is it President Xi Jinping’s staff member, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who’s out of control? Or has she simply lost control?

First, the police shot, at point blank range, an 18-yr-old student (and arrested him for his role in the shooting), during the then-latest round of violence that Lam’s police have been provoking with their approved-thug attacks, water cannon, pepper spray, cudgels, brandished firearms, and then shooting those firearms into the air.

Then, Lam made a classic despotic move: banning facemasks during public gatherings of three or more folks (imagine getting fewer than that at a pedestrian crosswalk).  She even invoked a British colonial law to rationalize that ban.  In response to that latest attack on freedom, Hong Kong citizens protested in their tens of thousands again.

And one of Lam’s policemen—who wasn’t even in uniform—shot a 14-yr-old child.  Then arrested him for rioting and assaulting police. Apparently, it really is illegal in Xi’s/Lam’s Hong Kong to interfere with a police bullet making its lawful rounds.

An Intelligence Strike

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A second putative whistleblower is claimed to be coming forward with commentary on President Donald Trump’s telecon with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.  This one claims to have firsthand knowledge of the call.  This one also is claimed by others to be from the intelligence community.

I’ll ask the obvious question, knowing the NLMSM will refuse to answer: who’s leaking these things?  The whistleblower’s claims haven’t even been evaluated by the Intelligence Community Inspector General as such things are supposed to be before anything is done with that kind of complaint.

The other obvious thing is this warning by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) about a President daring to dispute with the intelligence community.

Let me tell you: you take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you[.]

This is against the backdrop of the drumbeat of smears and false accusations by ex-CIA Director John Brennan and the more sub rosa false claims made by the more genteel ex-DIA Director James Clapper, also known for his “not deliberately” done misstatements during a House hearing.

This “complaint” is the second intelligence community strike of which Schumer warned, coming after the first “whistleblower” strike was shown to have been coordinated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) (who lied about that coordination) and shown further to be foolish at best, consisting as it does of nothing but second- and third-hand rumors.

Having sent out that stalking horse and learned something of the nature of the counters, this on may well be of better manufacture.

Unfortunately, though, it’s no longer possible to take intel’s “whistleblowers” seriously, even were a complaint to turn out to coincide with truth, because of this history of dishonesty.  And especially since these are being rolled out serially, keeping the matter in the newspapers and talk shows, rather than coming out together as a package, so the matter could be addressed with some finality.

Look for a third strike, if this one plops, also.