Unseemly

Marc Thiessen thinks President Donald Trump’s commentary about John McCain are unseemly, and they hurt Trump more than they do anything else.

…the president isn’t “hurting” the senator since he’s dead and that he’s only “hurting himself” because he’s “stepping on his own story” regarding the strong economy.

But this just shows how obliviously self-important Thiessen and his fellow “journalists” are: it’s their story they’re writing; it’s their conscious, deliberate editorial decision to “report” on and “analyze” superficialities like exchanges of ad hominem attacks (not only involving McCain; that’s just the latest NLMSM compulsion) rather than to do the harder work of reporting on and analyzing actual policy decisions, proposals, and outcomes.

Trump’s approval ratings would be much more accurately represented, and likely be higher, were guys like Thiessen and his cronies not so obsessed with Trump’s words and didn’t so diligently ignore his actions.

These persons of the NLMSM are just trying to ape their industry’s social media rival—and going for click bait rather than actual journalism.

Robert Francis O’Rourke Strikes (Out) Again

The Wall Street Journal has noticed the opening shambles of O’l Beto’s campaign for President, summing up his mess with its subheadline:

The identity left is carving him up like a Texas steak before he gets to Donald Trump.

But it’s not just about the identity politics segregationists of the Left. It’s also about Beto himself and his opponents in the current Progressive-Democratic Party primary campaign for the Party nomination.

A joke about a husband’s participation in raising kids is offensive only to those looking for excuses to be offended and to those using manufactured offense for personal gain. It’s the same with the other foolishnesses of a 15-yr-old that Beto seems to have grown up and out of—manufactured offenses by those looking to promote themselves at others’ expense rather than on their own merits. And yet Beto ducks into apology.  At least Howard Dean had a primal scream.  This is a primal squeak.

Beto O’Rourke, gamma male. That’s what we need for President. Yeah.

The other Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidates demonstrate their incapacity for independent thought with their artificial offense-taking from their rival’s childhood activities. We need one of those in the White House, all right.  Sure.

The Nature of an Enemy

This is the nature of the People’s Republic of China which the Left—our own and Europe’s in particular—pooh-pooh as not actually utterly antithetical to our values, our liberties, even our independence from PRC domination.

After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the region’s culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to engineer a society loyal to Beijing.

The rationalization for this purge comes from Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Communist Party of China’s Deputy Party Committee Secretary for Xinjiang:

Ethnic unity is the lifeline of all ethnic groups in China and the foundation of economic progress in Xinjiang[.]

And that unity must be a Sinicized unity. This is the lesson the men of the People’s Republic of China government think they’ve learned from the Jinjiang and Mongol conquering of China.

That Sinicization requirement is illustrated by this:

“We can’t have a culture anymore,” said a Uighur resident of Urumqi who works at a state-owned resources company. He said he stopped visiting his local mosque after officials came to his house to confiscate his Quran. “No one goes any more. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

Anything other is evil and must be stamped out.

It’s a long article, but RTWT.

Biden Wants Abrams?

Is Progressive-Democratic Party primary candidate wannabe for President—and the most Progressive candidate in (or almost in) the Party primaries—really thinking about asking Stacey Abrams, ex-Minority Leader of Georgia’s House of Representatives and late of the race for Georgia governor, to be his Vice President candidate in his campaign?

That brings up a question of what he really thinks of Abrams:

I mean, you got the…African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking [woman]. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Or is he simply that desperately pandering?

An Arrogant Pope

Recall that French (should be ex-)Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted of covering up the child sexual abuses inflicted by his priests.  Pursuant to that conviction, Barbarin tendered his resignation as Cardinal to Pope Francis.

Amazingly, the Pope refused the resignation.

“Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation,” Barbarin said in a statement.

Being convicted of a crime in a petty secular court apparently doesn’t satisfy the Pope’s definition of guilt.

Of course, the Pope also could have been operating off the French court’s sentence for Barbarin’s barbarity.  The court sentenced Barbarin to all of six months in jail. And then suspended even that. If the French don’t care about Barbarin’s terrible actions, there wouldn’t seem much reason for the Pope to, either.  Maybe not so arrogant.