Truth and Courage

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On the matter of woke culture and canceling, The Wall Street Journal editors wrote about McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski’s private text to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot following her visit to the McDonald’s restaurant that was the scene of the murder of a 7-year-old child. That text was, in pertinent part,

p.s. tragic shootings in last week, both at our restaurant yesterday and with Adam Toldeo [sic]. With both, the parents failed those kids which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix[.]

The mob howled and Kempczinski went directly to his knees and begged forgiveness.

The Editors had this about the matter, and they’re right as far as they went.

It’s a sign of our destructive times that saying in a private text that adults have some responsibility for the fate of their children is unacceptable.

But that’s far from all of the matter. It’s also a sign of our destructive times that American CEOs like Chris Kempczinski are such abject cowards and beg to apologize for having spoken uncomfortable truths.

We don’t have a Canadian-style truth code, but with company pseudo-leaders like Kempczinski, we don’t need one.

Weakness

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Russia is continuing to withhold a free flow of natural gas to the EU, holding the flow down in order to elevate prices inflicted on the EU’s citizenry and to restrain Europe’s industrial capacity.

Gas prices have soared in Europe in recent months due to low inventories and a recovery in demand as the economy rebounds from the pandemic. The price surge has taken a toll on energy-intensive industrial activity while consumers face a steep rise in energy bills as the winter heating season begins.

Those prices are five times the level of just a year ago—before Biden surrendered to Putin on the Russia-sponsored hacker shutdown of Colonial Pipeline by unblocking the finishing of Russia’s Nordstream 2, which unblock also was in furtherance of Merkel’s demand for Russian natural gas via that cross-Baltic Sea pipeline.

Officials and analysts say that Moscow is using Europe’s energy crunch to gain geopolitical leverage.

Well, of course Putin is. He’s not an idiot.

And

In another sign that Russia isn’t about to significantly boost supplies to Europe, Ukraine’s gas transmission system said Sunday that it hasn’t received any additional requests from Gazprom and the gas transit remained below capacity.

This is the outcome of outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s and newly arrived American President Joe Biden’s (D) enthusiastically pursued energy policies coupled with Biden’s overt timidity in front of Putin. First, demonstrate Europe’s weakness. Only after that, exploit that weakness.

It stretches credulity beyond breaking to believe two such heavily intelligent people didn’t anticipate this.

Desperation

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…of a different sort. “The Sounds of Silence” is the headline of a Wall Street Journal review of a piece of “music” that was “composed” by John Cage. And no, nor WSJ nor Cage were playing off a Simon & Garfunkle song.

Cage’s contribution to a 1952 open-air concert was a four minute and thirty-three second bit of silence in three movements not played on a piano. The pianist sat—silently—on his bench in front of the array of keys and indicated the end of each movement by closing the keyboard lid, subsequently indicating the beginning of the next movement, after the designated period of quiet, by reopening the lid. As the reviewer put it,

All the rest was stillness; throughout the performance he didn’t make a sound.

Then the desperation:

But Cage’s “4’33″” is actually not about silence at all. Though most members of the audience were focused on the absence of music, there were also ambient vibrations they ignored: wind stirring outside, raindrops pattering on the tin roof—and, toward the end of the performance, the listeners themselves making “all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. Music is continuous,” the composer explained. “It is only we who turn away.”

Nature abhors a vacuum, including that of the absence of sound. Who was the more desperate here, though—the composer, or the audience? Or the WSJ with this review of a piece that premiered in 1952 and died then (at least to my plebian sensibilities)? Or me, for spending a post on this subject instead of something that matters?

Government Controls

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Here’s the latest version of the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to expand government control over our economy, this time using Medicare drug pricing as their venue. This example also is the latest inclusion in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s reconciliation bill.

The Health and Human Services Secretary will “negotiate” 10 to 20 of the drugs that Medicare spends most on, starting in 2025. Drug makers will get socked with a 95% excise tax on gross sales if they don’t agree to the government’s price.

This is a textbook example of the fascism version of socialism. Companies are free to produce and sell whatever they want, so long as it fits within Government requirements directing what is produced, the volume of production, and the prices to be charged.

Yet, Biden can’t make the trucks run on time.

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.